No. 251-37 

LIBRARY 

OF THE 

DEPARTMFNT OF 5SATF 

Alcovi 
Shelf, 








Epochs of Modern History 



EDITED BY 



EDWARD E. MORRIS,- M.A., J. SURTEES PHILLPOTTS 

B. C. L. AND 

C. COLBECK M.A. 



THE EARLY PLANTAGENETS 



W. STUBBS, M.A. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY. 

Edited by Rev. G. W. Cox and Charles Sankey, M. A. 
Eleven volumes, i6mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. Price per 
vol., $1.00. The set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, Jpn.oo. 

Troy — Its Legend, History, and Literature. By S. G. W. 

Benjamin 
The Greeks and the Persians. By G. W. Cox. 
The Athenian Empire. By G. W. Cox. 
The Spartan and Theban Supremacies. By Charles Sankey. 
The Macedonian Empire. By A. M. Curteis. 
Early Rome. By W. Ihne. 
Rome and Carthage. By R. Bosworth Smith. 
The Gpacchi, Marius, and Sulla. By A. H. Beesley. 
The Roman Triumvirates. By Charles Menvale. 
The Earl> Empire. By W. Wolfe Capes. 
The Age of the Antonines. By W. Wolfe Capes. 

EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 

Edited by Edward E. Morris. Eighteen volumes, i6mo, 
with 77 Maps, Plans, and Tables. Price per vol., $1.00. 
The set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $18.00. 

The Beginning of the Middle Ages. By R. W. Church. 

The Normans in Europe. By A. H. Johnson. 

The Crusades By G. W. ("ox. 

The Early Plantagenets. By Wm. Stubbs. 

Edward III. By W. Warburton. 

The Houses of Lancaster and York. By James Gairdner. 

The Era of the Protestant Revolution. By Frederic Seebohm. 

Th.- Early Tudors. By C. E. Moberly. 

The Age of Elizabeth. By M. Creighton. 

The Thirty Years War, 1618-1648. By S. R. Gardiner. 

The Puritan Revolution. By S. R. Gardiner. 

The Fall of the Stuarts. By Edwnrd Hale. 

The English Restoration and Louis XIV. By Osmond Airy. 

The Age of Anne. By Edward K. Moris. 

The Early Hanoverians. Bv Edward E. Morris. 

Frederick the Great. By F. W. Longman. 

t he French Revolution and First Empire. By W. (?'C( nnoc- 

Morris. Appendix by Andrew D. White. 
^Hg Epoch of Reform. 1830-1850. By Justin Ma^arthy- 



epochs of Modern history 



i 



a 



s 



#1 



THE 



EARLY PLANTAGENETS 



BY 



WILLIAM STUBBS, M.A. 

REGIUS PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD 



WITH TWO MAPS 



NEW YOEK: 

CHAKLES SCKIBNEK'S SONS, 

1900. 




'V 






T5 




CONTENTS 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Importance of the Epoch — Its character in French and German 
History — In English History — Geographical Summary — Italy 
— Germany — France — Spain P&ge I 



CHAPTER II. 

STEPHEN AND MATILDA. 

Accession of Stephen — Arrest of the Bishops — Election of Matilda 
— The Anarchy — The Pacification n 



CHAPTER III. 

THE EARLY YEARS OF HENRY II. 

Terms of Henry's accession — His character — His early reforms — 
His relations with France — War of Toulouse — Summary of nine 
years' work ......... 34 



vi Contents. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HENRY II. AND THOMAS BECKET. 

The English Church— Schools of Clergy— Rise of Becket— Quarrel 
with the King— Exile— Death Page 58 

CHAPTER V. 

THE LATTER YEARS OF HENRY II. 

Continued Reforms— Revolt of 1173-1 174— Renewed industry of 
Henry — His later years — Quarrel with Richard — Fall and 
death 85 



CHAPTER VI. 

RICHARD CCEUR DE LION. 

Character of the Reign — Richard's first visit to England — His cha- 
racter — The Crusade — Fall of Longchamp— Richard's second 
visit — His struggle with Philip — His death . . .110 

CHAPTER VII. 

JOHN. 

John's succession — Arthur's claims — Loss of Normandy — Quarrel 
with the Church — Submission to the Pope — Quarrel with the 
Barons — The Great Charter and its consequences — Arrival of 
Lewis — John's death 136 

CHAPTER VIII. 

HENRY III. 

Character of Henry — Administration of William Marshall — Hubert 
de Burgh — Henry his own minister — Foreign favorites — Gene- 
ral misgovernment — Papal intrigue and taxation . . 161 



Contents. vn 

CHAPTER IX. 

SIMON DE MONTFORT. 

Ltelay of the Crisis — Simon de Montfort — Parliament of 1258 — 
Provisions of Oxford — Political troubles — Award of St. Lewis 
— Battle of Lewes — Baronial government — Battle of Evesham 
—Closing years . Page 189 

CHAPTER X. 

EDWARD I. 

Position and character of Edward — The Crusade — The accession 
— The conquest of Wales — Edward's legal reforms — Financial 
system — Growth of Parliament 212 

CHAPTER XI. 

THE CONFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS. 

Punishment of the Judges — Banishment of the Jews — Scottish suc- 
cession — The French quarrel — The Ecclesiastical quarrel — The 
Constitutional crisis — The Confirmation of the Charters — Par- 
liament of Lincoln — Its sequel — War of Scottish Independence 
— Edward's death . . . . . .. 238 

CHAPTER XII. 

EDWARD II. 

Character of Edward II. — Piers Gaveston — The Ordinances — ■ 
Thomas of Lancaster — The Despensers — The King's ruin anil 
death. 263 

Index . 291 



MAPS. 

Medieval Europe ...... To face Title 

England and France (1152-1327) . . . *' p. 34 



THE 

EARLY PLANTAGENETS- 



CHAPTER I. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Importance of the Epoch — Its character in French and German 
History — In English History — Geographical Summary — Italy 
— Germ any — France — Spain . 

The geographical area of that history which alone de- 
serves the name has more than once changed. The 
early home of human society was in Asia. 
Greece and Italy successively became the areas and 
theatres of the world's drama, and in Sln^ 
modern times the real progress of society history. 
has moved within the limits of Western Christendom. 
So, too, with the material history. At one period the 
growth of the life of the world is in its literature, at an- 
other in its wars, at another in its institutions. Sometimes 
everything circles round one great man ; at other times 
the key to the interest is found in some complex political 
idea such as the balance of power, or the realization of 
national identity. The successive stages of growth in the 



2 - The Early Plantagenets. ch. i. 

more advanced nations are not contemporaneous and may 
not follow in the same order. The quickened energy of one 
race finds its expression in commerce and colonization, 
that of another in internal organization and elaborate train- 
ing, that of a third in arms, that of a fourth in art and lite- 
rature. In some the literary growth precedes the political 
growth, in others it follows it ; in some it is forced into 
premature luxuriance by national struggles, in others the 
national struggles themselves engross the strength that 
would ordinarily find expression in literature. Art has 
flourished greatly both where political freedom has en- 
couraged the exercise of every natural gift and where 
political oppression has forced the genius of the people 
into a channel which seemed least dangerous to the op- 
pressor. Still, on the whole, the European nations in 
modern history emerge from somewhat similar circum- 
stances. Under somewhat similar discipline, and by 
somewhat similar expedients, they feel their way to that 
national consciousness in which they ultimately diverge 
so widely. We may hope, then, to find, in the illustra- 
tion of a definite section or well ascertained epoch of 
that history, sufficient unity of plot and interest, a suffi- 
cient number of contrasts and analogies, to save it from 
being a dry analysis of facts or a mere statement of 
general laws. 

Such a period is that upon which we now enter ; an 
„,, , epoch which in the history of England ex- 

The efoch v i 

to be now tends from the accession of Stephen to the 

death of Edward II.; that is, from the 

beginning of the constitutional growth of a consolidated 

English people to the opening of the long struggle with 

France under Edward III. It is scarcely less well 

defined in French and German history. In 

France it witnesses the process through 



ch. I. Introduction. 3 

which the modern kingdom of France was constituted ; 
the aggregation of the several provinces which had 
hitherto recognized only a nominal feudal supremacy, 
under the direct personal rule of the king, and their in- 
corporation into a national system of administration. 
In Germany it comprises a more varied series 
of great incidents. The process of disrup- 
tion in the German kingdom, never well consolidated, 
had begun with the great schism between North and 
South under Henry IV., and furnished one chief element 
in the quarrel between pope and emperor. During the 
first half of the twelfth century it worked more deeply, 
if not more widely, in the rivalry between Saxon and 
Swabian. Under Frederick I. it necessitated the re- 
modelling of the internal arrangement of Germany, the 
breaking up of the national or dynastic dukedoms. 
Under Frederick II. it broke up the empire itself, to be 
reconstituted in a widely different form and with altered 
aims and pretensions under Rudolf of Hapsburg. This 
is by itself a most eventful history, in which the varieties 
of combinations and alternations of public feeling abound 
with new results and illustrations of the permanence of 
ancient causes. 

In the relations of the Empire and the Papacy the 
same epoch contains one cycle of the great rivalry, the 
series of struggles which take a new form 
under Frederick I. and Alexander III., and 
come to an end in the contest between Lewis of Bavaria 
and John XXII. It comprises the whole drama of the 
Hohenstaufen, and the failure of the great hopes of the 
world under Henry VII., which resulted in the constitu- 
ting of a new theory of relations under the Luxemburg 
and Hapsburg emperors. 

Whilst these greater actors are thus preparing for the 



4 The Early Plantagenets. ch. i. 

struggle which forms the later history of European poli- 
tics, Spain and Italy are passing through a different 
discipline. In the midst of all runs the history of the 
Church and the Crusades, which supplies one continu- 
ous clue to the reading of the period, a common ground 
on which all the actors for a time and from time to time 
meet. 

But the interest of the time is not confined to political 

history. It abounds with character. It is an age in 

which there are very many great men, and 

An epoch of m -which the great men not only occupy but 

great men. ° j tr j 

deserve the first place in the historian's eye. 
It is their history rather than the history of their peoples 
that furnishes the contribution of the period to the world's 
progress. This is the heroic period of the middle ages, 
— the only period during which, on a great scale and on 
a great stage, were exemplified the true virtues which 
were later idealized and debased in the name of chivalry, 
— the age of John of Brienne and Simon de Montfort, of 
the two great Fredericks, of St. Bernard and Innocent 
III., and of St. Lewis and Edward I. It is free for the 
most part from the repulsive features of the ages that 
precede, and from the vindictive cruelty and political 
immorality of the age that follows. Manners are more 

refined than in the earlier age and yet 

Manners . ° 

and reii- simpler and smcerer than those of the next ; 

religion is more distinctly operative for good 
and less marked by the evils which seem inseparable 
from its participation in the political action of the world. 
Yet not even the thirteenth century was an age of gold, 
much less those portions of the twelfth and fourteenth 
which come within our present view. It was not an age 
of prosperity, although it was an age of growth ; its gains 
were gained in great measure by suffering If Lewis IX. 



ch. i. Introduction. 5 

and Edward I. taught the world that kings 

might be both good men and strong sove- Moral 

reigns, Henry III. and Lewis VII. taught it 

that religious habits and even firm convictions are too 

often insufficient to keep the weak from falsehood and 

wrong. The history of Frederick II. showed that the 

race is not always to the swift or the battle to the strong, 

that of Conrad and Conradin that the right is not always 

to triumph, and that the vengeance which evil deeds 

must bring in the end comes in some cases very slowly 

and with no remedy to those who have suffered. 

It is but a small section of this great period that we 
propose to sketch in the present volume ; the history of 
our own country during this epoch of great 

, ° . Importance 

men and great causes ; but it comprises the of Bng- 
history of what is one at least of England's in n this W ° r 
greatest contributions to the world's pro- e P° ch - 
gress. The history of England under the early kings of 
the house of Plantagenet unfolds and traces the growth 
of that constitution which, far more than any other that 
the world has ever seen, has kept alive the forms and 
spirit of free government ; which has been the discipline 
that formed the great free republic of the present day ; 
which was for ages the beacon of true social freedom that 
terrified the despots abroad and served as a model for 
the aspirations of hopeful patriots. It is scarcely too 
much to say that English history, during these ages, is 
the history of the birth of true political liberty. For, not 
to forget the services of the Italian republics, or of the 
German confederations of the middle ages, we cannot 
fail to see that in their actual results they fell as dead 
before the great monarchies of the sixteenth century, as 
the ancient liberties of Athens had fallen ; or where the 
spirit survived, as in Switzerland, it took a form in which 



6 The Early Plantagenets. ch. i. 

no great nationality could work. It was in England 
alone that the problem of national self-government was 
practically solved ; and although under the Tudor and 
Stewart sovereigns Englishmen themselves ran the risk 
of forgetting the lesson they had learned and being 
robbed of the fruits for which their fathers had labored, 
the men who restored political consciousness, and who 
recovered the endangered rights, won their victory by 
argumentative weapons drawn from the storehouse of 
medieval English history, and by the maintenance and 
realization of the spirit of liberty in forms which had 
survived from earlier days. It is an introduction to 
the study of English history during the 
of h th r is°book period of constitutional growth, that we shall 
attempt to sketch the epoch, not as a Con- 
stitutional History, but as an outline of the period and of 
the combinations through which the constitutional growth 
was working, the place of England in European history 
and the character of the men who helped to make her 
what she ultimately became. Before we begin, however, 
we may take a glance at the map of Europe at the point 
of time from which we start. 

Eastern Europe, from the coasts of the Adriatic to 
the limits of Mahometan conquest eastward, was sub- 
ject to the emperor who reigned at Con- 

Geographi- J , r 

cal sum- stantinople, and may, except for its mci- 

mary " dental connection with the Crusades, be left 

out of the present view. The northern portions were in 
the hands of half-civilized, half-Christianized races, 
Eastern which formed a barrier dangerous but 

Europe. efficacious between the Byzantine emperor 

and Western Christendom. The kingdom of Hungary, 
and the acquisitions of Venice on the east of the Adriatic 
fenced medieval Europe from the same enemies. Italy 



CH. I. 



Introduction. 



was divided between the Normans, who governed Apu- 
lia and Sicily, and the sway of the Empire, which under 
Lothar II. — the Emperor who was on the throne when 
our period begins— had become little more than nominal 
south of the Alps ; the independence of the imperial cities 
and small principalities reaching from the Alps to Rome 
itself was maintained chiefly by the inability of the 
Germans to keep either by administrative ^^ 

organization or by dynastic alliances a per- 
manent hold upon it. With both the Republican north 
and the Normanized south, the political history of the 
Plantagenet kings came in constant connection ; and 
even more close and continuous was the relation through 
the agency of the Church with Rome itself. At the 
opening of the period, Englishmen were not only study- 
ing in the universities of Italy, at Salerno, at Bologna, 
and at Pavia, but were repaying to Italy, in the services 
of prelates and statesmen, the debt which England had 
incurred through Lanfranc and Anselm. An English- 
man was soon to be pope. The Norman kings chose 
ministers and prelates of English birth ; and the same 
Norman power of organization which worked in England 
under Henry I. and Roger of Salisbury, worked in simi- 
lar line in Sicily under King Roger and his posterity. 

Looking northwards, we see Germany, in the middle 
of the twelfth century, still administered, although un- 
easily, under the ancient system of the four 

J J . Germany. 

nations, Saxony, Franconia, Swabia, and 
Bavaria; four distinct nationalities which refused perma- 
nent combination. This system was, however, in its last 
decay. Its completeness was everywhere broken in 
upon by the great ecclesiastical principalities which the 
piety and policy of the emperors had interposed among 
the great secular states, to break the impulse of aggres* 



8 The Early Plantagenets. ch. I. 

sive warfare, to serve as models of good order, and to 
maintain a direct hold in the imperial hands on territo- 
ries which could not become hereditary in a succession 
of priests. Not only so ; the debatable lands which lay 
between the great nations were breaking up into minor 
states : landgraves, margraves, and counts palatine were 
assuming the functions of dukes ; the dukes, where they 
could not maintain the independence of kings, were see- 
ing their powers limited and their territories divided. 
Thus Bavaria was soon to be dismembered to form a 
duchy of Austria ; Saxony was falling to pieces between 
the archbishops of Cologne and the margraves of Bran- 
denburg : Franconia between the Emperor and the Count 
Palatine ; Swabia was the portion of the reigning im- 
perial house, the treasury therefore out of which the 
Emperor had to carve rewards for his servants. Between 
the great house of the Welf in Saxony, Bavaria, and 
Lombardy, and the Hohenstaufen on the imperial thront 
and in Franconia and Swabia, subsisted the jealousy 
which was sooner or later to reach the heart of the Em- 
pire itself, to supply the force which threw the dislocated 
provinces into absolute division. 

Westward was France under Lewis VII., divided from 
Germany by the long narrow range of the Lotha- 
m . ringian provinces, over which the imperial 

I he inter- . 

mediate rule was recognized as nominal only. These 

provinces formed a debatable boundary 
line, which had for one of its chief functions the mainte- 
nance of peace between the descendants of Hugh Capet 
and the representatives of the majesty of Charles and 
Otto ; and which served its turn, for between France and 
the Hohenstaufen empire there was peace and alliance. 
But many of the provinces which now form part of 
France were then imperial, and beyond the Rhone and 



ch. i- Introduction. 9 

Meuse tile king of Paris had no vassals and but uncertain 
allies. Within his feudal territory, the 

i* r France. 

count of Flanders to the north, the duke of 
Aquitaine to the south, the duke of Normandy with his 
claims over Maine and Brittany, cut him off from the 
sea ; and even the little strip of coast between Flanders 
and Normandy was held by the count of Boulogne, who 
at the moment was likewise king of England. Yet the 
kingdom of France was by no means at its deepest de- 
gradation. Lewis VI. had kept alive the idea of central 
power, and had obtained for his son the hand of the 
heiress of Aquitaine ; the schemes were already in opera- 
tion by which the kings were to offer to the provinces a 
better and firmer rule than they enjoyed under their 
petty lords, by which fraud and policy were to split up 
the principalities and attract them fragment by fragment 
to the central power, and by which even Normandy itself 
was in little more than fifty years to be recovered ; by 
which a real central government was to be instituted, 
and the semblance of national unity to be completed by 
the formation of a distinct national character. 

North of France the imperial provinces of Lower 
Lorraine, and the debatable lands between Lorraine 
and Saxony, had much the same indefinite The l ow 
character as belonged to the southern parts Countries, 
of the intermediate kingdom. They seldom took part 
in the work of the Empire, although they were nominally 
part of it, and the stronger emperors enforced their 
right. But as a rule they were too distant from the cen- 
tre of government to fear much interference, and, en- 
joying such freedom as they could, they gladly recog 
nized the emperor's sway when they required his help. 
We shall see the princes of Lorraine taking no small 
part in the negotiations between England and Germany 



io 77ie Early Plantagenets. ch. i. 

under Richard and John, but they generally played a 
game with Flanders, France, and the Empire which has 
but an indirect bearing on European politics ; and we 
chiefly hear of these lands as furnishing the hordes of 
mercenary soldiers for the crusades and internal wars of 
Europe, until almost suddenly the Flemish cities break 
upon our eye as centres of commerce and political life. 
Southward lie Spain and Portugal ; divided into sev- 
eral small kingdoms between closely allied 
Spain and an( j kindred kings, all emploved in the 

Portugal. r • ' ■ 

long crusade of seven centuries against the 
Moor ; a crusade which is now beginning to have hopes 
of successful issue. Central Spain, on the line of the 
Tagus, is still in dispute, although Toledo had been 
taken in 1085, and Saragossa in 11 18. Lisbon was taken 
with the help of the Crusaders in 1147. In each of the 
Christian states of Spain, free institutions of govern- 
ment, national assemblies and local self-government, 
preserved distinct traces of the Teutonic or Gothic origin 
of the ruling races ; and even before the English parli- 
ament grew to completeness, the Cortes of Castile and 
Aragon were theoretically complete assemblies of the 
three estates. The growth of Spain is one of the dis- 
tinct features of our epoch ; but it is a growth apart. 
There are as yet scarcely more than one or two points at 
which it comes in contact with the general action of 
Europe. 



a. d. 1 1 35 • Stephen and Matilda. 1 1 



CHAPTER II. 

STEPHEN AND MATILDA. 

Accession of Stephen — Arrest of the Bishops — Election of Matilda 
— The Anarchy — The Pacification. 

The English had had hard times under the Conqueror 
and his sons, but they had learned a great lesson ; they 
had learned that they were one people. • , 

J f Results of 

The Normans too, the great nobles who had the Norman 
divided the land, and hoped to create little 
monarchies of their own in every county and manor, 
had had hard times. Confiscation, mutilation, exile, 
death had come heavily upon them. They also had 
had a lesson to learn, to lid themselves of personal and 
selfish aims, to consolidate a powerful state under a 
king of their own race, and to content themselves as 
servants of the law with the substantial enjoyment of 
powers which they found themselves too weak to wrest 
out of the hands of the king, the supreme law-giver and 
administrator of the law. This lesson they had not 
learned. They had submitted with an ill grace to the 
strong rule of the king's ministers, the men whom they 
had taught to guard against their attempts at usurpation. 
Hence throughout these reigns the Norman king and the 
English people had been thrown together. They soon 
learned that they had common aims, finding themselves 
constantly in array against a common enemy. Hence, 
too, the English had already an earnest of the final vic- 
tory. They grew whilst their adversaries wasted. The 
successive generations of the Normans found their 
wiser sons learning to call themselves English, while 



12 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1135. 

those who would not learn English ways declined in 
number and strength from year to year. 

The Conqueror in a measure, and Henry I. with more 

clearness, perceived this, and foresaw the result. They 

were careful not only to call themselves 

Alliance . m -■' 

of king and English kings, but nominally at least to 
peop e, maintain English customs, and to rule by 

English laws. One by one the great houses which fur- 
nished rivals to their power dropped before them, and 
Henry I. at the close of his reign was so strong that, 
had it not been for the fact that he had by habit and 
routine made himself a law to himself, he might easily 
have played the part of a tyrant. But the forces which 
he and his father had so sturdily repressed were not ex- 
tinguished ; nor was the administrative system, by which 
they at once maintained the rights of the English and 
kept their own grasp of power, sufficiently consolidated 
to stand steadily when the hands that had reared it were 
taken away. 

This also, it may seem probable, Henry I. distinctly 

saw. It was to his apprehensions on this 

Question of account that for years before his death he 

succession. J 

was busily employed in securing the succes- 
sion by every possible means to his own children. The 
feeling which led him to do so is not quite capable of 
simple analysis. He had no great love for his daughter, 
the empress Matilda ; what paternal affection he had to 
lavish had been spent on his son William, whose death 
was no doubt the trouble that went nearest to his heart. 
We cannot suppose that he cared much for the people 
whom, although they had delivered him more than 
once in the most trying times, he never scrupled, when 
it suited his purpose, to treat as slaves. It would almost 
seem as if he felt that, unless he could anticipate the 



a.d. 1 135. Stephen and Matilda. 13 

continuance of power in the hands of his daughter and 
her offspring, his own tenure of it for the present would 
be incomplete, and the great glory of the sons of Rollo 
would suffer diminution in his hands. 

Three times, therefore, by the most solemn oaths, he 
had tried to secure the adherence of the nation to her 
and to her son. Vast assemblies had been 

Precautions 

held, attended by Normans and English taken by 
alike. Earl Stephen and earl Robert had 
vied with one another as to who should take the first 
oath of homage ; the concurrence of the Church had 
been promised and, so far as gratitude and a sense of 
interest as well as duty could go, had been secured. 
But all this had been insufficient to stay Henry's mis- 
givings. At the time of his death he had been already 
four years in Normandy striving to keep peace between 
Matilda and her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, between 
the Normans and the Angevins, and to consolidate his 
hold on the duchy, which had at last, since the death of 
his nephew and brother, become indisputably his own. 
His sudden death occurred in the midst of these de- 
signs. It was said and sworn to by his steward, Hugh 
Bigot, a man whose later career adds little to his au- 
thority as a witness, that just before his death, provoked 
by her perverseness, he had disinherited his daughter. 
It may have been so ; the threat of disinheritance may 
have been a menace which his unexpected death gave 
him no time to recall. But the very report was enough. 
He died on December 1, 11 35 ; and from that moment 
the succession was treated as an open question, to be 
discussed by Normans and Englishmen, together or 
apart, as they pleased. 

We may if Ave choose speculate on the motives that 
swayed the great men. No doubt the pure Norman 



14 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1135- 

nobles would gladly have set aside alto- 

Who were 

thecompe- gether the descendants of Harlotta ; all the 
Normans together would have refused the 
rule of Geoffrey of Anjou. A new duke, if they must 
have a duke, might be chosen from the house of Cham- 
pagne, from among the sons of Adela, the Conqueror's 
greatest and most famous daughter ; Count Theobald 
was the reigning count, but he was not the eldest son, 
and as his elder brother had been set aside so might he. 
Stephen, the next brother, the Count of Mor- 
Stephen of tam an( j Boulogne, and first baron of Nor- 

Blois. ° - 

mandy, had already his footing in the land. 
His wife too was of English descent. Her mother was 
sister to the good queen of Henry I., and whatever the 
old king had hoped to gain by his blood connection with 
his subjects, Stephen might gain by his wife. Stephen 
was a brave man, too, and he had as yet made no 
enemies. 

But his success, such as it was, was due to his own 
promptness. He had, as count of Boulogne, the com- 
mand of the shortest passage to England. Whilst the 
Normans were discussing the merits of his brother 
Theobald, he took on himself to be his own messenger. 
He remembered how his uncle had won the crown and 
treasure of William Rufus ; he left the Norman lords to 
look after the funeral of their dead lord and sailed for 
Kent ; at Dover and at Canterbury he was received with 
sullen silence. The men of Kent had no love for the 
, stranger who came, as his predecessor Eu- 

arrivai in stace had done, to trouble the land : on he 

went to London, and there he learned that 
the same prejudice which existed in Normandy against 
the Angevins was in full force. "We will not have," the 
Londoners said, "a stranger to rule over us;" though 



A . d . 1 1 3 5 . Stephen and Matilda . 1 5 

how Stephen of Champagne was more a stranger than 
Geoffrey of Anjou it is not easy to see. Anyhow, as 
nothing succeeds like success, nothing is so potent to 
secure the name of king as the wearing of the crown. 
So Stephen went on to Winchester, and there secured the 
crown and treasure. In little more than three weeks he 
had come again to London and claimed the crown as 
the elect of the nation. 

The assembly which saw the coronation and did 
homage on St. Stephen's day was but a poor substitute 
for the great councils which had attended 
the summons of William and Henry, and Stephen ° f 
in which Stephen, as a subject, had played andcorona- 
a leading part. There was his brother Henry 
of Winchester, the skilled and politic churchman, who 
was willing enough to be a king's brother if he might 
build up ecclesiastical supremacy through him ; there 
was Archbishop William of Corbeuil, who had under- 
taken by the most solemn obligations to support Matilda, 
and who knew that his prerogative vote might decide 
the contest against Stephen, although it could not restore 
the chances of peace; there was Roger of Salisbury, the 
late king's prime minister, the master builder of the 
constitutional fabric, undecided between duty and the 
desire of retaining power. Very few of the barons were 
there ; Hugh Bigot, indeed, with his convenient oath, and 
a few more whose complicity with Stephen had already 
thrown them on him as a sole chance of safety. The 
rest of the great men present were the citizens of Lon- 
don, Norman barons of a sort, foreign merchants, some 
few rich Englishmen : all of them men who were used 
to public business, who knew how Henry I., had held 
his courts, who believed confidently in force and money. 
They had first encouraged Stephen from fear of Geof- 



1 6 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1136, 

frey ; and more or less they held to Stephen as long as 
he lived. These men constituted the witenagemot that 
chose him king, and overruled the scruples of the incon- 
stant archbishop. They took upon them to represent 
the nation that should ratify the election of a new king 
with their applause. 

Henry I. was not yet in his grave ; but all promises 

made to him were forgotten. With what 
of r ste C hen er seems a sort of irony, Stephen issued as his 

coronation charter a simple promise to ob- 
serve and compel the observance of all the good laws 
and good customs of his uncle. 

The news of the great event traveled rapidly. Count 
Theobald, vexed and disappointed as he was, refused to 
contest the crown which his brother already wore ; Geof- 
frey and Matilda were quarrelling with their own sub- 
jects in Anjou; and Robert of Gloucester, who hated 
Stephen more than he loved Matilda, saw that he must 
bide his time. Some crisis must soon occur; he knew 
that Stephen would soon spend his treasure and break 
his promises. Meanwhile the old king must be buried 
like a king ; and the great lords came over with the 
corpse to Reading where he had built his last resting- 
place. There Stephen met them, within the twelve days 
of Christmas ; and after the funeral, at Oxford or some- 
where in the neighborhood, he arranged terms with 
them ; terms by which he endeavored, amplifying the 
words of his charter, to catch the good-will of each class 
of his subjects. To the clergy he promised relief from 
the exactions of the late reign and freedom of election ; 
to the barons he promised a relaxation of the forest law, 
the execution of which had been hardened and sharp- 
ened by Henry I.; and to the people he promised the 
abolition of danegeld. " These things chiefly and other 



A. d. 1 136. Stephen and Matilda. 17 

things besides he vowed to God," says Henry of Hunt- 
ingdon, "but he kept none of them." The promises 
were perhaps not insincere at the time ; anyhow they 
had the desired effect, and united the nation for the 
moment. 

The king by this means got time to hasten into the 
North, where King David of Scots, the uncle of the em- 
press, had invaded the country in her name. 
The two kings met at Durham. David had p 5 * invasion 

by the Scots. 

taken Newcastle and Carlisle ; Newcastle 
he surrendered, Carlisle Stephen left in his hands as a 
bribe for neutrality. It was too much for David, who, 
although a good king, was a Scot. He agreed to make 
peace : but he had sworn fealty to his niece : he could 
not become Stephen's man. His son Henry, however, 
might bear the burden ; so Henry swore and Stephen 
sealed the bargain with the gift of Huntingdon, part of 
the inheritance of Henry's mother, the daughter of Wal 
theof, the last of the English earls. Then Stephen went 
back to London and so to Oxford. There he published 
a new charter, intended to comprise the new promises 
of good government. 

This was done soon after Easter, and, as the name of 
earl Robert of Gloucester is found among the witnesses, 
it is clear that he had submitted ; but the 
oath which he took to Stephen was a con- ofs°tephf n arter 
ditional one, more like that of a rival poten- 
tate than of a dependent ; he would be faithful to the 
king so long as the king should preserve to him his 
rights and dignities. This was no slight concession, 
made by Robert, doubtless because he saw that his sis- 
ter's cause was hopeless ; but it was no slight obligation 
for Stephen to undertake. Robert had great feudal 
domains in England, and all the personal friends of his 



1 8 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1135. 

father and sister were at his beck. Stephen might have 
been safer with him as a declared enemy. But for the 
moment there was peace. 

The charter, published at Oxford, promised good 
government very circumstantially ; the abuses of the 
Church, of the forests, and of the sheriffs, were all to be 
remedied. But the enactments made were not nearly so 
clear or circumstantial as the promises made at the late 
king's funeral. 

The first cloud, and it was a very little one, arose 

soon after. Before Whitsuntide Stephen was taken ill, 

and a rumor went forth that he was dead. 

Rebellion The Norman rage for treason began to fer- 

011136. & ° 

ment. Hugh Bigot, the lord of Norwich, 
was the first to take up arms ; Baldwin of Redvers, the 
greatest lord in Devonshire, followed. But the king re- 
covered as quickly as he had sickened. He took Nor- 
wich and Exeter, but —deserting thus the uniform policy 
of his predecessors — spared the traitors. Cheered by 
this measure of success, he immediately broke the second 
of his constitutional promises, holding a great court of 
inquiry into the forests, and impleading and punishing 
at his pleasure. 

The year 11 36 affords little more of interest; the year 
1 1 37 was spent in securing Normandy, which Geoffrey 

and Matilda were unable to hold against 
Beginning j^™ and in forming a close alliance with 

of troubles. ° 

France. When he returned, just before 
Christmas, he had spent nearly all his money, and the 
evil day was not far off. Rebellion was again threaten- 
ing, and a mighty dark cloud had for the second time 
arisen in the North. We are not told by the historians 
exactly whether the king's misrule made the opening for 
the revolt, or the revolt forced him into misrule. Possibly 



a . d . 1 1 3 8 . Stephen and Matilda . 1 9 

the two evils waxed worse and worse together ; for 
neither party trusted the other, and under the circum 
stances every precaution wore the look of aggression. 
Stephen was to the last degree impolitic ; 
and to say that is to allow that he was more invasion by 
than half dishonest. Still he had the great £\fg*' 
majority of the people on his side. A pre- 
mature but general rebellion in the early months of 11 38 
was crushed in detail. Castle after castle was taken ; but 
Robert of Gloucester had now declared himself, and 
King David, seeing Stephen busily employed in the 
South, invaded Yorkshire. It was a great struggle, but 
the Yorkshiremen were equal to the trial. Whether or 
no they loved Stephen they hated the Scots. The great 
barons who were on the king's side did their part ; the 
ancient standards of the northern churches, of St. Peter 
of York, St. Wilfrid of Ripon, and St. John of Beverley, 
were hoisted, and all men flew to them. The old arch- 
bishop Thurstan, who had struggled victoriously twenty 
years before against King Henry and the archbishop of 
Canterbury to boot, sent his suffragan to 
preach the national cause Not only the the stan- 
knights with their men-at-arms, but the hus- dard- 
bandmen, with their sons and servants, the old Anglo- 
Saxon militia, the parish priests at the head of their 
parishioners, streamed forth over hill and plain, and in 
the Battle of the Standard, as it was called, they beat 
the Scots at Cowton Moor with such completeness that 
the rebellion came to nothing in consequence. 

Stephen felt no small addition of strength from this 
victory, but he was nearer the end of his treasure and the 
days of peace were over. Without money g , , 
it is hard to act like a statesman ; the diffi- imprudent 
culties were too strong for Stephen's grate* 



20 The Ea?:ly Plantagenets. a.d. 113S 

tude and good faith. Yet he began his misrule not with- 
out some method. The power of Robert of Gloucester 
lay chiefly in his influence with the great earls who re- 
presented the families of the Conquest. Stephen also 
would have a court of great earls, but in trying to make 
himself friends he raised up persistent ene- 
His new mies. He raised new men to new earldoms, 

earls. 

but as he had no spare domains to bestow, 
he endowed them with pensions charged on the Exche- 
quer : thus impairing the crown revenue at the moment 
that his personal authority was becoming endangered. 
~ . To refill the treasury he next debased the 

Coinage J 

debased. coinage. To recruit his military power, di- 

minished by the rebellion, and by the fact that the weak- 
ness of his administration was letting the county organi- 
Mercenaries zation fall into decay, he called in Fleming 
imported. mercenaries. The very means that he took 

to strengthen his position ruined him. The mercenaries 
alienated the people : the debased coinage destroyed the 
confidence of the merchants and the towns : the new and 
unsubstantial earldoms provoked the real earls to further 
hostility ; and the newly created lords demanded of the 
king new privileges as the reward and security for their 
continued services. 

Still the clergy were faithful ; and the clergy were very 

powerful ; they conducted the mechanism of government, 

they filled the national councils ; they were 

Breach with j-j^ too anc j earnes t in the preservation of 

the clergy. r 

peace. With Henry of Winchester his 
brother, Roger of Salisbury his chief minister, Theobald 
of Canterbury his nominee, he might still flourish. The 
Church at all events was sure to outlive the barons. 
With almost incredible imprudence Stephen contrived 
to throw the clergy into opposition, and by one fell stroke 



A. d. 1 139. Stephen and Matilda. 21 

to break up all the administrative machinery of the 
realm. It may be that he was growing suspicious, or 
jealous : it is more probable that he acted under foolish 
advice. Anyhow he did it. 

Roger of Salisbury, the great justiciar of Henry I., 
was now an old man. He had contributed more perhaps 
than any other to set Stephen on the throne, 
and had not only first placed in his hands ?^ e / of 

J r balls bury. 

the sinews of war, but had maintained the 
revenue of the crown by maintaining the administration 
of justice and finance. He had not served for naught. He 
had got his son made chancellor; two of his nephews 
were bishops, one of them treasurer of the king as well. 
He had no humble idea of his own position : he had built 
castles the like of which for strength and beauty were 
not found north of the Alps. He had perhaps some in- 
tention of holding back when the struggle came and of 
turning the scale at the last moment as seemed him best, 
an intention which he shared with the chief of his 
brethren ; for Henry of Winchester, although the king's 
brother, was before all things a churchman ; and Theo- 
bald of Canterbury, although he owed his place either 
to the good-will or to the connivance of Stephen, was 
consistently and more or less actively a faithful adherent 
to Matilda and her son. 

How much Stephen knew of the designs of the bishops 
we know not, what he suspected we can only suspect : 
but the result was unmistakable. He tried 
a surprise that turned to his own discomfi- thelfishops, 
ture. He arrested bishop Roger and his II39- 
nephew, Alexander, bishop of Lincoln, and compelled 
them to resign the castles which he pretended to think 
they were fortifying against him. At once the church 
was in mms : sacrilege and impiety determined even 



22 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1147 

Henry of Winchester, who in 11 39 became legate of the 
see of Rome, against his brother. 

This would have been hard enough to bear, as many 
far stronger kings than Stephen had learnt and were to 
learn to their cost. But the very men on whom his vio- 
lence had fallen were his own ministers, justiciar, chan- 
cellor, and treasurer. The Church was in danger, the 
ministers were in prison: justice, taxation, 
press Matii- police, everything else was in abeyance. ; 
da amves. an( j j ust at fa e ^g^ time the empress 

landed. At Christmas 1 139 the whole game was up : the 
land was divided, the empress had the west, Stephen 
the east ; the Church was in secession from the State. 
Roger died broken-hearted. Henry was negotiating 
with the empress. The administration had come to 
naught, there were no courts of law, no revenue, no 
councils of the realm. There was not even strength for 
an honest open civil war. The year 1140 is filled with 
a mere record of anarchy. At the court at Whitsuntide 
only one bishop attended and he was a foreigner. 
Stephen we see now obdurate, now penitent; now ener- 
getic, now despondent ; the barons selling their services 
for new promises from each side. 

It is now that the period begins which William of 

Newburgh likens to the days when there was no king 

in Israel, but every man did what was right 

B f 6 anarch g m n * S OWn e Y es > n2L Y> not wnat wa S right, 

but what was wrong also, for every lord was 
king and tyrant in his own house. Castles innume- 
rable sprang up, and as fast as they were built they 
were filled with devils ; each lord judged and taxed 
and coined The feudal spirit of disintegration had for 
once its full play. Even party union was at an end, 
and every baron fought on his own behalf. Feudalism 



A . D . 1 1 4 1 . Stephen and Matilda . 2 3 

had its day, and the completeness of its triumph ensured 
its fall. 

All this was not realized at once. The new year 1141 
found Stephen besieging Lincoln, which was defended 
by Ranulf, earl of Chester, and Robert of 
Gloucester. Stephen had not yet been de- ™L p ™ e " taken 

x J prisoner^ 1x41. 

feated in the field, and he had still by his 
side a considerable body of barons, though none so great 
as the almost independent earl whom he was attacking. 
Now, however, he was outmatched or out-generaled. 
After a struggle marked chiefly by his own valiant ex- 
ploits he was taken prisoner, and sent to the empress by 
her brother as a great prize. The battle of Lincoln was 
fought on February 2, and a week after Easter, in a 
great council of bishops, barons, and abbots, Matilda, 
the empress of the Romans, was elected 
Lady of England at Winchester. This as- Eld?. ° f 
sembly was, it must be allowed, mainly 
clerical ; but there is no doubt that it represented the 
wishes of a great part of the barons, who, so far as they 
were willing to have a king or queen at all, preferred 
Matilda to Stephen. Henry of Winchester, however, 
took advantage of the opportunity to make somewhat 
extravagant claims on behalf of his order, declaring that 
the clergy had the right to elect the sovereign, and ac- 
tually carrying out the ceremony of election. The citi- 
zens of London pleaded hard for the release of Stephen, 
whom they, six years before, had elected with scarcely 
less audacious assumption, but in vain. Henry was 
now at the crest of the wave, and he saw the triumph of 
the Church in the humiliation of his brother. War was 
the great trial by combat ordained between kings. Ste- 
phen had failed in that ordeal ; judgment of God was 
declared against him ; like Saul he was found wanting. 



24 The Early Plantage nets, a.d. 1141. 

So Matilda became the Lady of the English ; she was 
not crowned, because perhaps the solemn consecration 
which she had received as empress sufficed, or perhaps 
Stephen's royalty was so far forth indefeasible ; but she 
acted as full sovereign nevertheless, executed charters, 
bestowed lands and titles, and exerted power sufficient 
to show that she had all the pride and tyrannical intoler- 
ance of her father, without his prudence or self-control. 
She, too, was on the crest of her wave and had her little 
day. But the barons looked coolly on the triumph ; it 

was their policy that neither competitor 
SeTlrons! should destroy the other, but that both 

should grow weaker and weaker, and so 
leave room for each several feudatory to grow stronger 
and stronger. Neither king nor empress had anything 
like command of his or her friends, or anything like 
general acceptance. 

Stephen's fortunes reached their lowest depth when 
the Londoners a few days before Midsummer received 
Matilda's tne empress as their sovereign. She had no 

imprudent sooner achieved success than she began to 

ruie. ° 

alienate the friends who had won it for her. 
The bishop of Winchester, although he had not scrupled 
to sacrifice his brother's title to the exigencies of his 
policy, bore no grudge against the queen and her chil- 
dren, and endeavored to prevail on the empress to 
guarantee to the latter at least their mother's inheritance. 
Matilda would be satisfied with nothing less than the 
utter ruin of the rival house, and although the queen 
was raising a great army in Kent for Stephen's libera- 
tion, she refused even to temporize. Henry in disgust 
retired from court and took up his residence at Winches- 
ter ; thither the empress, having in vain attempted to 
recall him to her side, and having made London too hot 



a. d. 1 141. Stephen and Matilda. ?5 

to hold her, followed him, and established herself in the 
royal castle as he had done in the episcopal palace. 
Winchester thus witnessed the gathering of the two hosts 
for a new struggle. 

The queen brought up her army from Kent, the king 
of Scots and the earl of Gloucester brought up their 
forces from the north and west. But the queen showed 
the most promptitude. The baronage who were not 
bound to the legate's policy refused to complete the 
king's ruin, and stood aloof, intending to profit by the 
common weakness of the competitors. In attempting to 
secure the empress's retreat to Devizes, on September 
14, the earl of Gloucester was taken priso- 
ner, and the two parties from this time for- Gloucester 
ward played with more equal chances. An ta ^ en 

L J t- prisoner. 

exchange of the two great captives was at 
once proposed, but mutual distrust, and the desire on 
both sides to take the utmost advantage of their situa- 
tion, delayed the negotiation for six weeks. Stephen at 
Bristol, Robert at Rochester, must have watched the 
debate with longing eyes. The countess Mabilia of 
Gloucester was prepared to ship Stephen off to Ireland, 
if a hair of Robert's head were injured; the queen de- 
manded no less security for her husband's 
safety. At last, on All Saints' Day, both Exchange 

J ot prisoners. 

were released, each leaving security in the 
hands of the other that the terms should be fairly ob- 
served. 

As soon as they were free they both prepared for a 
continuance of the struggle. The empress fixed her 
court again at Oxford ; Stephen, who seems at once to 
have resumed his royal position, the claims founded by 
the election of the empress suffering a practical refuta- 
tion by his release, re-entered London. The legate, still 



26 The Eai'ly Plantage nets. A.D.1142. 

desiring to direct the storm, called a council at West- 
minster in December, where he apologized for his con- 
duct rather than defended it, and where the king laid a 
formal complaint against the treason of the men who 
had taken and imprisoned him. But the time for open 
hostilities was deferred, the certain exhaustion which 
after a few months more renders the history an absolute 
blank, was beginning to tell. Six months passed with- 
out a sign. By Easter the empress had determined to 
send for her husband. Geoffrey would not obey his" 
wife's summons until he had earl Robert's personal as- 
surance that he should not be made a fool of. Earl 
Robert went to persuade his brother-in-law to throw his 
sword into the scale. Geoffrey determined first to secure 
Normandy, and kept the earl at work there until the 
news from England peremptorily recalled him. 

Stephen had waited until Robert had left England, 

and then, emerging from his sick room, had pounced 

down upon Wareham, the strong castle 

Success of A - . - , 

Stephen in which the earl had entrusted to his son, had 
II42 ' taken it, and then hastening northwards, 

had burnt the town of Oxford, and shut up the empress 
in the castle. There she remained until her brother 
could succor her. He returned at once, recovered 
Wareham and some castles in Dorset, and called to- 
gether the forces of his party at Cirencester. But the 
winter was now advancing ; the empress contrived a ro- 
mantic escape in the snow from Oxford, and before ac- 
tive war could be resumed she directed that the castle 
should be surrendered. So the year 1142 comes to an 
end, and we see the two parties resting in their exhaus- 
The tion. The western shires acknowledged 

kingdom Matilda, who reigned at Gloucester; the 

divided. ' b 

eastern acknowledged Stephen, who made 



a.d. 1 1 46. Stephen and Matilda. 27 

Kent his head quarters. The midland counties were the 
seat of languid warfare, partly carried on about Oxford, 
which was a central debating ground between the two 
competitors, partly in Lincolnshire and Essex, where 
Stephen had to keep in order those great nobles who 
aimed at independence. Geoffrey de Mandeville, the 
earl of Essex, who accepted his earldom from both the 
courts, employed him chiefly in 1143 and 1144. The 
earl of Chester, who was uniformly opposed to Stephen, 
but who no doubt fought for himself far more than for 
the empress, held Lincoln as a constant thorn in the 
royal side. In 1 145 Oxfordshire and Berkshire were the 
seat of war; in 11 46 Stephen surprised the earl of 
Chester at Northampton and compelled him to give up 
Lincoln, and now for the first time seems to have 
thought himself a king. In despite of all precedent 
and all prejudice, defying a superstition to which even 
Henry II. thought it wise to bow, that no king should 
wear his crown within the walls of Lincoln, he wore his 
crown there on Christmas Day. 

In passing thus rapidly over these years we are but 
following the example of our historians, who share in 
the exhaustion of the combatants, record- 
ing little but an occasional affray, and a Period of 

J anarchy. 

complaint of general misery. Neither side 
had strength to keep down its friends, much less to en- 
counter its enemies. The price of the support given to 
both was the same — absolute license to build castles, to 
practice private war, to hang their private enemies, to 
plunder their neighbors, to coin their money, to exercise 
their petty tyrannies as they pleased. England was dis- 
membered. North of the Tees ruled the king of Scots, 
David the lawgiver and the church builder, under whose 
rule Cumberland, Westmoreland and Northumberland 



28 The Early Plantagenets. a.d 1146. 

were safe ; the bishopric of Durham, too, under his 
wing, had peace. The West of England, as we have 
seen, was under the earl of Gloucester, who in his sis- 
ter's name founded earldoms, and endeavored to con- 
centrate in the hands of his supporters such vestiges of 
the administrative organization as still subsisted. But 
the great earls of the house of Beaumont, Roger of 
Leicester and Waleran of Meulan, who dominated the 
midland shires, chose to act as independent sovereigns 
and made terms both in England and Normandy as if 
they had been kings. 

In all the misery, and exhaustion, and balance of 
evils, however, time was working. The first generation 
of actors was leaving the stage, and a new one — if not 
better, still freed from the burden of odium, duplicity, 
and dishonesty which had marked the first— came into 
play. And the balance of change veered now to 
Stephen's side. The year 1145 cut off Geoffrey de 
Mandeville in the midst of his sins, the year 1143 had 
seen the death of Miles of Hereford, the empress's 
most faithful servant. In 1147 the great earl Robert of 
Gloucester passed away, and it is no small 
Departure s ip- n of the absolute deadness of the coun- 

of Matilda. fe . 

try at the time, that both his death and the 
departure of the empress, which must have almost coin- 
cided with it, are not even noticed in the best of the 
contemporary historians. 

This year 1147 sees Stephen again ostensibly the sole 
ruler; really, however, devoid of power, as he had al- 
ways been of counsel, his only strength be- 
The second m2 - the weakness of every one else. This 

Crusade. & ,111 , 

year is marked by the great crusade of the 
emperor Conrad of Hohenstaufen, and of Lewis VII., 
and Eleanor of Aquitaine, an expedition in which 



AD.i 147. Stephen and Matilda. 29 

England nationally had no share, and in which few of 
the barons took part, but which was recruited to a con- 
siderable extent by volunteers from the English ports. 
The capture of Lisbon from the Moors, and the placing 
of the kingdom of Portugal upon a sound footing there 
by, was the work mainly of the English pilgrims, but it 
was not a national work, and it touches our history 
merely as suggesting a probability that some of our 
most turbulent spirits may have joined the crusade, and 
thereby increased the chances of peace at home. With 
1 147, then, begins a new series of movements and a new 
set of actors, the details of whose doings are involved 
and obscure. 

The death of earl Robert and the departure of the 
empress left their party without an ostensible head ; for 
Geoffrey of Anjou was far more intent on securing Nor- 
mandy than England, and his son Henry was only just 
springing into manhood, David of Scotland being looked 
upon apparently as the guardian of his interests. Henry 
of Winchester had lost the legation, which had given 
him such great strength in the earlier part of the strug- 
gle ; the popes who had conferred it and 
promised to renew it, had rapidly given way at r Rome mgS 
to successors who were less favorable, and 
the chair of St. Peter was now filled by Eugenius III., 
the friend of St. Bernard, who was at this time the great 
spiritual power in European politics. The scantiness of 
our authorities does not allow us to speak with certainty, 
or to decide whether St. Bernard in the English quarrel 
was moved by a conviction of Stephen's wrong-doing, 
or by the influence of the Cistercian order; it is, how- 
ever, certain that the king and his brother by attempt- 
ing to force their nephew, afterward canonized as St 
William, into the see of York, in opposition to the Cister- 



30 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1148. 

cian abbot of Fountains, had thrown that strong order, 
of which Bernard was the ornament, into opposition ; 
and it is also certain that the strings of political intrigue 
were held by Eugenius III., and that every possible ad- 
vantage was given by him to Henry of Anjou. The 
Englishman, Nicolas of St. Alban's, afterward pope 
Adrian IV., was a close confidant of the pope, and 
John of Salisbury, the friend of Becket, was a close 
confidant of Nicolas ; Becket was the clerk and secre- 
tary of Archbishop Theobald of Canterbury. These 
may have been the three strands of a strong diplomatic 
cord. The first impulse, however, which was to bring 
about Stephen's final humiliation was, as before, given 
by himself. In 1148, Eugenius III. called a council at 
Rheims. Archbishop Theobald asked leave to go. 
Stephen suspected that a plot would be concocted on 

behalf of the empress and her son ; Henry 
with the of Winchester suspected that the archbishop 

wanted to apply for the legation. Leave 
was therefore refused, and Theobald went without leave ; 
Stephen took the measures usual in such cases, confis- 
cation and threats, and sent his chief ministers, Richard 
de Lucy and William Martel, to counteract the arch- 
bishop's influence in the council. This had the effect of 
throwing Theobald, who had hitherto only been re- 
strained by his oath of allegiance from taking the side 
of the empress, openly into the arms of her party ; so 
much so that he preferred exile to submission, and even 
went so far as to consecrate the celebrated Gilbert 
Foliot, the abbot of Gloucester, and nominee of Henry 
of Anjou, to the see of Hereford, in opposition to both 
king and bishops Neither Stephen nor Theobald was, 
however, as yet in a position to act freely. Stephen con- 
fiscated and Theobald excommunicated, but a hollow 



a.d.i 15 2. Stephen and Matilda. 31 

peace was patched up between them in the autumn by 
Hugh Bigot and the bishops. 

In 1 149, Henry of Anjou, now sixteen years old, was 
knighted by his great uncle David, at Carlisle. Stephen, 
accounting this the beginning of war, hast- 

, , ■ r , .,1 Question of 

ened to York ; but went no farther, and that succession, 
cloud seemed to have passed away. The 
king was growing old, and it was necessary for him to 
secure the succession to his son Eustace ; the military 
interest of the time, always very languid, now flags alto- 
gether, and the real business is conducted at the papal 
court. There, as usual, fortune seems to halt according 
to the depth of the purses of the rivals, the balance, 
however, in the main inclining as the pope would have 
it. Sometimes there is talk of peace ; now the bishop 
of Winchester is to be made archbishop of Wessex, 
now Theobald is to have the legation ; now the bishops 
are persuaded to recognise Eustace, now they are for- 
bidden peremptorily to do any such thing. And this 
goes on for five years, Stephen relieving the monotony 
of the time by an occasional expedition into the West 
of England. 

Henry, however, was making good use of his time on 
the Continent. Eustace, whose marriage with Con- 
stantia of France, a marriage purchased by the treasures 
of bishop Roger in 1 1 39, made him a dan- p rogre ss of 
gerous competitor, laid claim to Normandy. Henry of An- 
Geoffrey, after defending it on his son's 
behalf during two years, finally made it over to him in 
1 151 and then died. Henry the next year married Elea- 
nor of Aquhaine, the divorced wife of Lewis VII , and 
so secured nearly the whole of Western France. By 
the Christmas of 11 52 he was ready to make a bold 
stroke for England also. 



32 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1152. 

And England was ready for him. The bishops were 
watching for their time. The young Eustace was offend- 
ing and oppressing. The king had now thrown the 
great house of Leicester as well as the prelates into de- 
termined opposition. The cessation of justice and the 
prevalence of private war made every one long for any 
change that would bring rest. In 1 1 52 the bishops, act- 
ing under instructions from Rome, finally refused to sanc- 
tion the coronation of Eustace, and Stephen, having 
again tried force, was compelled to acqui- 

Arrivalof T , i i j i_- 

Henry, 1153. esce. But he saw the end approaching. 

In January 11 53 Henry of Anjou landed. 
His friends gathered round him, Stephen and Eustace 
collected their mercenaries. At Malmesbury, and again 
at Wallingford, the two armies stood face to face, but 
the great barons refused to abide by the decision of 
arms ; on both occasions they mediated, and the armies 
separated without a blow. Just after the second meet- 
ing Eustace died, and Stephen whose health was failing, 
who had lost his noble-hearted wife in 1152, and whose 
surviving children were too young to be exposed to the 

chances or risks of a disputed succession, 
^peace 10nS could only give way. The negotiations, 

begun at Wallingford, were carried on and 
completed by a treaty at Westminster, concluded in No- 
vember, in which Stephen recognised Henry as his heir, 
and Henry guaranteed the rights of Stephen's children 
to the inheritance of their parents. At the same time a 
scheme of reform, which was to replace the administra- 
tive system of Henry I., on its basis, was determined 
on, the details of which form a clue to the early policy 
of the reign of Henry II. Henry left England some 
three months after the conclusion of the peace. His life, 
it was said, was not safe, and the pressure which he had 



A.D. 1154- Stephen and Matilda. 33 

to put upon Stephen to induce him to carry out the re~ 

forms was only too likely to result in the renewal of war. 

He went away about Easter 11 54. Stephen 

blundered on for six months and then died ; death™ 54. 

not of a broken heart, perhaps, as the kings 

of history generally die, but certainly a disappointed 

man. 

The reign of Stephen was, it may be fairly said, the 
period at which all the evils of feudalism came in Eng- 
land into full bearing, previous to being cut off and 
abolished forever under his great successor. The reign 
exemplifies to us what the whole century that followed 
the Conquest must have been if there had not been 
strong kings like William I., and Henry I., sturdily to 
repress all the disintegrating designs of their barons 
and to protect the people. The personal Estimate of 
character of Stephen needs no comment. Stephen's . ha- 
He was brave. He was at least so far gentle 
that none of the atrocious cruelties alleged against his 
predecessors are attributed to him. He was false, partly 
no doubt under the pressure of circumstances, which he 
could not control, but in which he had involved himself 
by his first betrayal of faith. What may be the legal 
force of his election by the nation we need not ask : it 
was the breach of his oath that condemned him. No 
man trusted him ; and as he trusted no one, knowing 
that he did not deserve trust, and that those who had 
betrayed their oath to his uncle would not hesitate to 
betray their oaths to him, he expected no one to trust 
him. He was not great, either for good or for evil, in 
himself. If he had had more wisdom he might have 
shown more honesty ; certainly if he had been more 
honest he would have gained more credit for wisdom. 
Had he been either a more unscrupulous knave or a 



34 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1154. 

more honest man he would certainly have been far 
more successful. 



CHAPTER III. 

THE EARLY YEARS OF HENRY II. 

Terms of Henry J s accession — His character — His early reforms — 
His relations with France— War of Toulouse — Summary of nine 
years' work. 

Very few epochs of history are more clearly marked 
than the accession of Henry II. Most great eras are 
Importance determined, and their real importance as- 
attached by certained, long after the event ; the famous 

contempora- . 

ries to Henry's Parliament of Simon de Montfort, in 1265, 

accession. . . , , , ,, 

for instance, is scarcely named by the con- 
temporary historians, and only rises into importance as 
later history unfolds its real bearings. But the succes- 
sion of Henry is hailed by the writers of his time as a 
dawn of hope, a certain omen of restoration and re- 
freshing. Often and often, it is true, such omens are 
discerned on the accession of a new king; men hasten 
to salute the rising sun ; good wishes to the new sove- 
reign take the form of prophecy, and, where they are 
fulfilled, partly help on their own fulfilment. Here, 
however, we have omens that were amply fulfilled, and 
an epoch which those who lived in it were the first to 
recognise. The fact proves how weary England was of 
Stephen's incompetency, how thoroughly she had learned 
the miserable consequences of a feudal system of society 
unchecked by strong government, how readily she wel- 
comed the young and inexperienced but strong and, in 
the main, honest rule of Henry. 



ch. in. Early Years of Henry II. 35 

Henry II. was born in 1 133 ; and if we may believe 
the testimony of Roger Hoveden, who was one of his 
chaplains, and a very conscientious com- „ , 

r . . . Youth and 

piler of histories, he was recognized by education of 
Henry I. as his successor directly after his enry ' 
birth. When his grandfather died he was two years old. 
His father and mother made, as we have seen, a very 
ill-concerted effort to secure the succession, and it was 
not until the boy was eight years old that the struggle 
for the crown really began. In 1141 he was brought to 
England ; then no doubt he learned a dutiful hatred of 
Stephen, and was trained in the use of arms ; but whether 
he received his training under his father in France or 
under his uncle, Robert of Gloucester, in England, or 
under his great uncle, David of Scotland, we are not 
told. Only we know that, when he was sixteen, he was 
knighted at Carlisle by King David; that, like a wise 
boy, he determined to secure his French dominions be- 
fore he attempted the recovery of England ; that he suc- 
ceeded to Normandy and Anjou in 1151, when he was 
eighteen ; married his wife, the Duchess Eleanor of 
Aquitaine who had been divorced from Lewis VII., and 
secured her inheritance, when he was nineteen ; that he 
came again to England and forced Stephen to submit to 
terms when he was twenty ; and that at the age of twenty- 
one he succeeded him on the throne in pursuance of 
those terms. These dates are sufficient to prove that, 
although Henry might have got considerable experience 
in arms as a boy and young man, he could scarcely have 
had yet the education of a lawgiver. Somewhat of poli- 
tics he might have learnt, but he had not had time or op- 
portunity to learn a regular theory of policy, or to create a 
method of government which, when the time for action 
came, he might put into execution. The extraordinary 



36 'ifie Early Plantagenets. ch. hi. 

power which he showed when the time for action really- 
arrived was in part a gift of genius ; partly too it arose 
from his wisdom in choosing experienced advisers, and 
partly it was an effect of his following the broad lines of 
his grandfather's administrative reforms. 

Henry II. was a very great sovereign in many ways : 

he was an admirable soldier, most careful in forming 

plans, wonderfully rapid in the execution of 

Character of them ; he was at once cautious andadventu- 

Henry II. ' 

rous, sparing of human life and moderate in 
the use of victory. Yet he was far from being a mild or 
gentle enemy ; and he was economical of human life 
rather because of its cost in money than from any piti- 
fulness. If he spared an enemy it was only when he 
had entirely disabled him from doing harm, or when he 
was fully assured of his power to turn him into a friend. 
His foes accused him of being treacherous, but his 
treachery mainly consisted in letting them deceive them- 
selves. Thus he was no hero of probity, and his craft 
may have gone farther in the direction of cunning than 
was approved by the rough diplomacy of his time. He 
is said to have had a maxim, that it is easier to repent of 
words than of deeds, and therefore wiser to break your 
word than to fulfil an inconvenient obligation ; but it 

cannot be said that the facts of history show 
His family ^j m to h ave acted upon this shameless 

policy. x 

avowal, captious and unscrupulous as his 
policy more than once appears. He had no doubt a 
difficult part to play. His dominions brought him into 
close contact with all the great sovereigns of Europe. 
He had considerable ambitions — for himself, to hold fast 
all that he had acquired by inheritance and marriage ; 
for his sons to obtain by marriage or other settlement 
provinces which, united to their hereditary provision, 



ck. in. Early Years of Henry II. 37 

might make them either a family of allied sovereigns 01 
an imperial federation under himself, and in each form 
the mightiest house in Christendom. Such a network of 
design was spread before him from the first. As the 
head of the house of Anjou the kings and princes of 
Palestine regarded him as their family re- His great posi . 
presentative, the grandson of King Fulk, tion in Chris- 

r 1 /-- 1 r tendom. 

and the man created for the re-conquest ot 
the East. To him in their utmost need they sent the 
offer of their crown, the keys of the Holy Sepulchre and 
of the Tower of David. As the head of the Normans 
he was looked up to by the Sicilian king as the presump- 
tive successor, and had the strange fortune and self- 
restraint to decline the offer of a second crown. The 
Italians thought him a likely competitor for the empire 
when they saw him negotiating for his son John a mar- 
riage with the heiress of Savoy, which would give him 
the command of the passes of the Alps ; Spain saw in 
him the leader of a new crusade against the Moors when 
he sought for his son Richard a bribe in the Princess 
of Aragon, whose portion would give him the passes of 
the Pyrenees. Frederick Barbarossa might well feel sus- 
picious when he heard that English gold was given to 
build the walls of Milan, and when he remembered that 
Henry the Lion, the great Duke of Saxony and Bavaria, 
the head of the Welfic house, his cousin and friend, 
whom with heavy heart he had sacrificed to the neces- 
sities of state, was also son-in-law of the king of the Eng- 
lish. So wide a system of foreign alliances and designs 
helped to make Henry both cautious and crafty. 

Nearer home his ability was tasked by Lewis VII., 
whose whole policy consisted in a habit of Lew : sV ii 
pious falsehood, who really acted upon the 
principle which Henry ironically formulated, and who by 



3 8 The Early Plantageneis. ch, in 

either cowardice or faithlessness made himself far more 
dangerous than by his strength. 

Henry was a kind and loving father, but his political 
game led him to sacrifice the real interest of his children 
to the design for their advancement. They soon found 
out that he used them like chess-men, and could not 
see the love which prompted his design. 
Silmlnage- To nis people he was a politic ruler, a great 
mentofhis reformer and discipliner ; not a hero or 

children. , 

patriot, but a far-seeing king who recognized 
that the well-being of the nation was the surest founda- 
tion of his own power. As a lawgiver or financier, or 
supreme judge, he made his hand felt everywhere; and 
at the beginning of his reign, when the need of the re- 
forms was forcibly impressed on the minds of his subjects 
by their recent misery, his reforms were welcomed ; he 
was popular and beloved. By and by, when he had 
educated a new generation, and when the dark cloud of 
sin and sorrow and ingratitude settled down upon him, 
they forgot what he had done in his early days ; but they 
never forgot how great a king he was. We may not say 
that he was a good man ; but his temptations were very 
great, and he was sinned against very much by his wife 
and children. It is only in a secondary sense that he 
was a good king, for he loved his power first and his 
people only second; but he was good so far as selfish 
wisdom and deep insight into what is good for them 
could make him. In his early years he gave promise of 
something more than this, and some share of the blame 
that attends his later short-comings must rest with those 
who scrupled at nothing that might humiliate and disap- 
point him. 

In appearance, we are told, Henry was a tall, stout 
man, with a short neck, and projecting but very ex- 



A. d. H53- Early Years of Henry II. 39 

pressive eyes ; he was a careless dresser, a great hunter, 
a man of business rather than a model of chivalry ; ca< 
pable of great exertion, moderate in meat and drink, 
and anything but extravagant in personal as opposed t<? 
official expenditure. He was a builder of halls and 
castles, not very much of churches ; but that may easily 
be accounted for. We are glad to have him pictured 
for us even with this scanty amount of detail, for he is 
well worth the trouble of an attempt at least to realize 
his outward presentment. Every one knows Henry VIII. 
by sight ; it might be as well if we had as definite an 
impression of Henry II. 

We have observed, in sketching the close of the last 
reign, the existence of certain terms by which Henry 
and Stephen, after or in preparation for the 
peace of November 11 53, agreed that the reform f 

country should be governed. Those terms 
are not preserved in any formal document, but they 
occur in two or three of the historians of the time, in a 
somewhat poetical garb, disguised in language adapted 
partly from the prophecies of Merlin, king Arthur's seer, 
which were in vogue at the time, and partly from the 
words of Holy Scripture ; and yet, from the clue they 
furnish to the reforms actually carried out by Henry, 
they seem to be based upon certain real articles of 
agreement. 

By these terms the administration of justice was to be re- 
stored, sheriffs to be appointed to the counties, and a care- 
ful examination into their honesty and justice 
to be instituted ; the castles which had been plcificadon. 
built since the death of Henry I. were to be 
destroyed ; the coinage was to be renewed, a uniform 
silver currency of lawful weight; the mercenaries who 
had flooded the kingdom under Stephen were to be sent 



40 The Early Plantagenets. a.d, 1153. 

back to their own countries ; the estates which had been 
usurped were to go to their lawful owners ; all property 
alienated from the crown was to be resumed, especially 
the pensions on the Exchequer with which Stephen en- 
dowed his newly-created earls ; the royal demesnes were 
to be re-stocked, the flocks to return to the hills, the 
husbandman to the plough, the merchant to his wares ; 
the swords were to be turned into ploughshares and the 
spears into pruning-hooks. 

These sentences give us a clue to Henry's reforms ; 
that is, they show us clearly the evils that first called for 

his attention. The kingdom, divided in two 
these terms. under Stephen, had been in constant war ; 

the barons on one side had entered on the 
lands of the barons on the other; Stephen had confis- 
cated the estates of Matilda's friends in the East of 
England, Matilda had retaliated or authorized reprisals 
in the West. All this must be set right. The crown 
had been the greatest loser, and the impoverishment of 
the crown involved the oppression of the people. Henry 
gained the crown by a national act ; he must then re- 
sume not only the wasteful grants of Stephen but those 
of his mother also, and, in his character of king, know 
neither friends nor foes amongst his own people. So 
the Exchequer, the board which managed the royal 
revenue, must be placed on its old footing, and under its 
old managers. With the Exchequer would revive the 
ancient office of the sheriffs, to whom both the collection 
of revenue, the administration of justice in the shires, 
and the maintenance of the military force was en- 
trusted. Thus local security would restore and revive 
trade and commerce. And when the local ad- 
ministration of the sheriff was revived, no doubt the 
feudal usurpations of the lords of castles and manors 



A.D 1 154. Early Years of Henry II. 41 

must end. The fortified houses must be pulled down ; 
no more should the petty tyrants tax and judge their 
men, fight their battles like independent princes, and 
coin their money as so many kings. The great Peace 
should be restored, of which the king was guardian and 
keeper. In fact, the golden age was to return. Nor 
was it to be delayed until Henry came to the crown ; it 
was to be Stephen's last and expiatory task to bring 
about these happy results. Stephen, as we saw, wanted 
either the will or the power to accomplish it. 

Stephen died on October 25, n 54. Henry was in 
France at the time, and was not able, owing to the 
weather, to reach England before Decem- 
ber 8. During this time the management Arrival of 
of affairs rested with Archbishop Theobald successor 
of Canterbury, and in some measure per- i° 54 . tep en ' 
haps with his secretary, Thomas Becket, 
who had been so busy negotiating the succession of 
Henry. Although it was the theory that during the va- 
cancy of the throne all law and police were suspended, 
and no one could be punished for offences committed in 
a general abeyance of justice, the country remained 
quiet during these six weeks. Perhaps the rogUes were 
cowed by the apprehension of a strong king coming, 
perhaps the religious obedience inculcated by the arch- 
bishop was really maintained ; perhaps the same bad 
weather that kept Henry in Normandy kept thieves and 
robbers within doors. Nor was there any political rising 
during the interregnum. Stephen's children were not 
thought of, at least on this side of the Channel, as rivals 
to Henry. The Bishop of Winchester had learnt mode- 
ration, that might in him well pass for wisdom ; he might 
well feel that his position was a hazardous 
one, to be maintained only by caution ; advUers. 



42 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1154. 

and he had no reason, nor excuse for seeking a 
reason, for evading the compact which he had had a 
chief hand in making. It shows, however, his import- 
ance that as soon as Henry landed, which he did near 
Southampton, he hastened to Winchester, 
B j s «? p 1- and there visited his powerful kinsman, who, 

of Winchester. r \ ' 

as we learn, was now busily employed in 
collecting statues and sculpture from southern Europe, 
and with whom he made a friendship which, although 
once or twice seriously endangered, was never actually 
broken. Amongst the other leaders who likewise had 

learned wisdom we mu?t count the Empress 
The Matilda, who, strange to say, appears to us 

compress. . 

no more as the arrogant, self-willed virago, 
but as a sage politician and a wise, modest, pious old 
lady, living at Rouen, and ruling Normandy in the name 
of her son with prudent counsel. Not a word is said 
now of her succeeding to the throne or even resigning 
her rights to Henry ; all that was regarded as arranged 
by the settlement made with Stephen. Henry succeeded 
without a competitor. Stephen's minister, Richard de 

Lucy, became his minister. Theobald con- 
Theobald tinued to be, as his office made him, the 

and Becket. 

great constitutional adviser ; and to recon- 
cile personal convenience with constitutional precedent, 
he presented his secretary to the king as his future Chan- 
cellor. Thomas Becket thus entered on his high and 
fatal office. 

All this done, Henry appeared at Westminster on the 
19th of December, and was there crowned 
with the ceremonies observed at his grand- 
father's coronation, now more than half a century past, 
and bound himself by the same ancient and solemn pro- 
mises which Ethelred had made to Dunstan, and which 



a.d. 1 154. Early Years of Henry II 43 

the Conqueror, Henry I., and Stephen had renewed. 
Nor, when crowned, did he lose a moment : he issued a 
charter, as Stephen had done, at his coronation, confirm- 
ing his grandfather's laws. The same week he held a 
great court and council at Eermondsey. At once he re- 
established the Exchequer, recalling to the head of it 
Bishop Nigel of Ely, whom Stephen had displaced in 
1 140, and setting at work at once with the 

^ ' ° , . Banishment 

business of the revenue. From this court at D f mercena- 
Bermondsey went forth the decree that the nes - 
Flemish and other foreign mercenaries should leave the 
kingdom at once, and that the castles built under Stephen 
should be thrown down. The mercenaries fled forthwith. 
Their presence was perhaps the most offensive of all 
insults to the national pride, and the late reign had 
taught Normans and Englishmen that they had now a 
common nationality in suffering, if not in conquest. By 
this article of the agreement Henry faithfully stood. 
Although he fought all his foreign wars with mercena- 
ries, he never but once — and that in the greatest emer- 
gency, and to repel foreign mercenaries brought against 
him by the rebellious earls in 11 74 — introduced any such 
force into England. Even Richard employed in the 
kingdom no more foreigners than formed his ordinary 
surroundings, and it is not until John's reign that we find 
the country again oppressed and insulted by hired 
foreign soldiery. 

The demolition of the castles, which one contempo- 
rary writer reckons at three hundred and seventy-five, 
another a little later at eleven hundred and 
fifteen, was a still greater boon ; for these, J^tE. Cti ° n ° £ 
had they been suffered to stand, would not 
only have fitted England to be a constant scene of civil 
war, but have continued to afford to their owners a 



44 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1154 

shadow of claim for the exercise of those feudal juris- 
dictions which on the Continent made every baron a 
petty despot. Castles were unfortunately not entirely 
destroyed at this time ; the older strongholds, which had 
been built under Henry, were untouched, and gave 
trouble enough in the one civil war that marks the reign ; 
but the legal misuse of them was abolished, and they 
ceased to be centres of feudal lawlessness. 
Another measure which must have been taken at the 

coronation, when all the recognised earls 
aewearls. 6 did their homage and paid their ceremonial 

services, seems to have been the degrading 
or cashiering of the supposititious earls created by Ste- 
phen and Matilda. Some of these may have obtained 
recognition by getting new grants ; but those who lost 
endowment and dignity at once, like William of Ypres, 
the leader of the Flemish mercenaries, could make no' 
terms. They sank to the rank from which they had 
been so incautiously raised. 

The resumption of royal estates, and the restoration 
of the dispossessed on each side, was probably a much 

more difficult business than the humiliation 
iands mpti0n ° f of the earls - Doubtless the enemies of 

Henry's mother would bear their reverses 
silently, to avoid entire ruin ; or only those would think 
of continuing in opposition who had no hope but in terms 
which might be granted to pertinacious resistance ; but 
Matilda's supporters might well think it hard that they 
shouldbe called upon to resign their hard-won gains. Still, 
Henry was a national king ; the resumption of domain 
was not an Angevin conquest ; it was a national restora- 
tion of the state of affairs as it stood before the beginning 
of the national quarrel. As a matter of fact only two or 
Resistance three of the nobles made any resistance. Wil- 



A.d.i 154. Early Years of Henry II. 45 

liam of Aumale, the Lord of Holderness, who of William 
had commanded at the Battle of the Stand- 
ard, and who played the part of a petty king in York- 
shire, objected to surrender his great castle at Scar- 
borough. He, of course, had been on Stephen's side, 
and was, indeed, a member of the House of Champagne 
— the son of that Count Stephen who had been brought 
forward by the Norman earls as competitor with Wil- 
liam Rufus. Of Matilda's old friends, Hugh Mortimer, 
the lord of Wigmore, and Roger of Hereford, the son of 
Miles the Constable, declined to submit. The King of 
Scots too, Malcolm IV., grandson of King David and 
half-cousin of Henry, although the Northern counties 
had been held in trust for Henry, wished to retain them 
for himself. In January, 1 1 55, however, Henry marched 
northwards and brought the Count of Aumale to his 
feet. In March he was at London holding 

. r . 1 Surrender oi 

council for the restoration of peace and the the makon- 
confirmation of the ancient laws. He de- 
clared that neither friend nor foe should be spared. 
Roger of Hereford immediately surrendered. Hugh 
of Mortimer still held out, and did not submit until 
Henry had called out the national force for the capture of 
Bridgenorth. On exactly the same ground it was that 
Henry I., had won his victory over Robert of Belesme, 
when in 1 102 he laid the axe to the tree of feudal misrule, 
and his subjects, rejoicing at the overthrow of the oppres- 
sor, hailed him as now for the first time a king. This was 
accomplished in July. And this was a permanent paci- 
fication ; it was nearly twenty years before anything like 
rebellion reared its head. 

The history of the first year of Henry's reign is not, 
however, filled up thus. He restored the administra- 
tion of justice, and sent itinerant members of his 



46 The Early Plantagenets. A. D. 11 55. 

Restoration judicial court to enforce the law which 

of judicature. ■; 

had been so long in abeyance. He him- 
self learned the law as an apt scholar. Even at Bridge- 
north he found time to hear suits brought before him as 
supreme judge ; at Nottingham, whilst he was on his way 
from Scarborough, he threatened William Peverell with 
a charge of having poisoned the Earl of Chester. The 

very threat caused Peverell to take refuge 
councils. m a monastery. He held council after 

council, taking advice from his elders, and 
making friends everywhere. In one assembly held at 
Wallingford after Easter he obtained the recognition of 
his little son William, who afterwards died, as his suc- 
cessor. In another, held at Winchester, at Michaelmas, 
he proposed that the conquest of Ireland should be at- 
Proposal to tempted and a kingdom founded there for 
£ on ? uer Ire- his brother William. The empress objected 

to this, and it was given up, at least during 
her life, although the English Pope, Adrian IV., by his 
famous Bull Landabiliter, issued about this time, was 
already anxious to give the papal authorization to a 
scheme that would complete the symmetrical conforma- 
tion of Western Christendom. A national expedition, 
Henry may have thought, would do more than anything 
else to consolidate the national unity which was growing 
rapidly into more than a name. But clearly the time 
was not come for England, shorn of her Northern prov- 
inces, and with the Welsh unsubdued, to attempt foreign 
conquest ; and Henry had other states besides England 
to take thought for. 

The whole of the next year he had to spend in Nor- 
mandy and Anjou, and, when he returned in 11 57, he 
found abundant work ready for his hands in his still un- 
determined relations with Wales and Scotland. His first 



a.d. 1157. Early Years of Henry II 47 

visit was to the Eastern counties, and there he combined 
business with pleasure. William of Warenne, Count of 
Boulogne and Earl of Surrey, the son of Stephen, had 
received a considerable estate in Norfolk, including the 
castle of Norwich ; and Hugh Bigot, the 
earl of the county of Norfolk, the same p 11 ^, B j got 

J humbled, 1157. 

Hugh who had sworn that Henry I., disin- 
herited the empress, was very reluctant to accept the 
strong rule of the new king. Whether Hugh was now 
acting on behalf of Stephen's family or in opposition to 
them is not clear. It was his attitude that drew the king 
into that country. He was made to surrender his castles ; 
and William of Warenne likewise surrendered his spe- 
cial provision, on the understanding that he was to re- 
ceive his hereditary estates. Henry added solemnity to 
this visit by holding a solemn court and wearing his 
crown in state on Whit-Sunday, at St. Edmund's, the 
second recorded coronation-day of the reign. 
This ceremony was a revival of the great coronation, 
courts held by the Conqueror and his sons 
on the great festivals, Christmas, Easter, and Whitsun- 
tide, at Gloucester, Westminster, and Winchester, the 
three chief cities of the South. At such gatherings all 
the great men attended, both witan and warriors, clerk 
and lay. The king heard the complaints of his subjects, 
and decided their suits with the advice of his wise men ; 
the feudal services, by which the great estates were held, 
were solemnly rendered ; a special peace was set, the 
breakers of which within the purlieus of the court were 
liable to special penalties ; and during the gathering, 
whilst the people were amused and humored by the 
show, the king and his really trusted advisers contrived 
the despatch of business. The ceremony of corona- 
tion, which gave the name to these courts, was not, as is 



48 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 115 7 

sometimes supposed, a repetition of the formal rite of 
initiation by which the king at his accession received 
the authorization of God through the hands of the 
bishops ; the character so impressed was regarded as in- 
delible, and hence the only way of disposing of a bad 
king was to kill him. That rite, the solemn consecra- 
tion and unction, was incapable of being repeated. The 
crown was, however, on these occasions placed on the 
king's head in his chamber by the archbishop of Canter- 
bury, with special prayers, and the court went in proces- 
sion to mass, where the king made his offering, and 
afterwards the barons did their services, as at the real 
coronation. These courts had been given up by Ste- 
phen, as the historian Henry of Huntingdon notes with 
an expressive lamentation, in the year 1140, when the 
clergy ceased to attend them ; and he had made only 
one unlucky attempt, the Lincoln coronation, in 1147, 
to revive them. Henry, however, renewed the custom 
on this occasion, and twice after this we find it observed. 
At the Christmas of this year he was crowned at Lincoln, 
but not, like Stephen, in the cathedral, for he feared the 
omen ; and at Easter 1 158 he was crowned at Worcester. 
After that he never actually wore the crown again, al- 
though he did occasionally hold these formal courts, in 
order to receive the honorary services by which his 
courtiers held their estates. This coronation, then, at 
St. Edmund's was, as usual, turned to purposes of busi- 
ness. The king was ready for a Welsh war ; measures 
were taken for providing men and money. 

At another council, held in July, at Northampton, the 
expedition started. This was Henry's first Welsh war, 

and it was no great success. The army ad- 
First Welsh vance( } i nto North Wales ; at Consilt, near 

Flint, an awkward pass, they were resisted 



a.d. 1 158. Early Years of Henry II. 49 

by the Welsh. There Henry of Essex, the Constable, 
let fall the royal standard, as he declared, by accident. 
The army, thinking that the king was killed or the battle 
lost, fell into confusion, and the day was claimed by the 
Welsh as a victory. That it was merely a misfortune 
of little importance is proved by the fact that Henry 
continued his march to Rhuddlan. The ostensible pre- 
text of the expedition being to arrange a quarrel between 
Owen Gwynneth and his brother Cadwalader, there wa: 
no overt attempt at conquest. The king returned from 
Wales into Nottinghamshire to meet the young Malcolm 
IV., who seems at this time to have finally surrendered 
his hold on the Northern counties. At Christmas Henry 
was at Lincoln. 

In 1 1 58 he wore his crown, as we have seen, at Easter, 
at Worcester ; in the summer he went into Cumberland, 
no doubt to set the machinery of government at work 
there in due order after the change of rulers; and at 
Carlisle on Midsummer-day he conferred knighthood on 
William of Warenne. In August he went Long visit 
to France, whence he did not return until t0 France, 
January, 1163. This brings us to the point 
of time at which the struggle with Becket begins, to 
which, with its attendant circumstances, we may devote 
another chapter. 

We may, therefore, now take up the thread of the 
foreign transactions at the beginning of the reign and 
bring it down to the same point. The geo- Foreign 
graphical extent of Henry's dominions fur- P f | e e s n S j° ns 
nishes the leading clue to this part of his 
history. They embraced, speaking roughly and roundly, 
Normandy, Maine, Touraine, Anjou, Guienne, Poictou, 
and Gascony. But this statement has to be accepted 
with some very important limitations. In the first place, 



50 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 115 7. 

each of these states, and each bundle of them, had come 
to him in a different way — some from his father, some 
from his mother, some by his wife — and each bundle 
had been got together by those from whom he received 
it in similar ways. The result of that was that in each 
state or bundle of states there was a distant relation be- 
tween the lord and his vassals — a constitution, we might 
call it, by which various rights and privileges and a va- 
Hisrela- rying legal system or customs subsisted, 

tions with his What was law in Normandy was not cus- 

vassals. m J 

tomary in Anjou ; and the barons of Poictou 
had, or claimed, customs which must, if they could have 
enforced them, have produced utter anarchy. Here was 
a constant and abundant source of administrative diffi- 
culties, the adjustment of which was one of the causes 
of Henry's long absence from England. But a second 
incidental result was, that, as many of these estates 
came into the common inheritance on very deficient 
title, conquest in one case, chicanery in another, there 
were a number of claimants in each, claimants who by 
prescriptive right might have lost all chance of recover- 
ing their lands, but whose very existence gave trouble. 
In Anjou, for instance, Henry had to contend against 
his own brother Geoffrey, to whom their father had left 
certain cities, and who might have a claim to the whole 
county. In Normandy the heirs of Stephen claimed the 
county of Mortain ; in Maine, Saintonge, and other 
Southern provinces, there were the remnants of older 
dynasties, always ready to give trouble 

But further than this, the feudal law, as it was then 
recognized in France, gave the king, in his manifold 
His relation capacities as king, duke, and count, certain 
to the King rights and certain obligations that are puz- 
zling now, and must have been actually 



a.d. 1 158. Early Years of Henry II 5 1 

bewildering then. Henry, as Duke of Normandy, in- 
herited the relation, entered into by his ancestor Duke 
Richard the Fearless, of vassal to the Duke of the 
Franks ; but the Duke of the Franks had now become 
King of France. It was a serious question how the 
duties of vassalage were to be denned. As Duke of 
Normandy also he had a right to the feudal superiority 
of Brittany. Yet it was no easy thing to say how Brit- 
tany could be made to act in case of a quarrel between 
king and duke. The tie which bound him as Count of 
Anjou was different from that which bound him as Duke 
of Normandy to the same King of France. As Count 
of Poictiers he was feudally bound to the Duke of Aqui 
taine, but he was himself duke of Aquitaine, unless he 
chose to regard his wife as duchess and himself as count, 
in which case he would be liable to do feudal service to 
his wife only, and she would be responsible for the ser- 
vice to the King of France ; a very curious relation for 
a lady who had been married to both. We do not, how- 
ever, find, that this contrivance was employed by Henry 
himself, although it was used by John. And this same 
point of difficulty arose everywhere. The feudal rights 
of Aquitaine— the right, that is, to demand homage and 
service— extended far beyond the limits of the sovereign 
authority of the dukes, and it was always an object to 
turn a claim of overlordship into an actual exercise of 
sovereign authority. The tie between the great county 
of Toulouse and the duchy of Aquitaine was complicated 
both by legal difficulty and by questions of descent. 
The rights over Auvergne, claimed by both the king and 
the duke, were so complex as to be the matter of con- 
tinual arbitration, and at last were left to settle them- 
selves. 

And to these must be added, in the third place, local 



52 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1158. 

and personal questions ; local, such as arose 
9^ es * lons of from uncertain boundaries, the line which 

separated Normandy from France, the Nor 
man from the French Ve.xin, being perhaps the chief; 

personal, arising from the enmity between 
Personal Eleanor and her first husband, from the at- 

questions. _ ' 

titude of the house of Champagne, from 
which Louis VII. had selected his third wife, and which 
had the wrongs of Stephen to avenge. The Count of 
Flanders also was a pertinacious enemy of Henry. 

Under these circumstances it is not difficult to see 

that Henry's policy, however ambitious he might be, 

was peace ; at all events, peace long enough 

Henry's to consolidate his dominions and crush an- 

true policy. 

tagonism in detail. And this must account 
for the fact that, with the exception of the war of Tou- 
louse, in which Louis VII. took part, not as a principal 
but as an ally of the count, there was no overt war be- 
tween Eleanor's two husbands until it was produced by 
an entirely new quarrel. It could not be expected that 
there should be any love or friendship, but there was 
peace. Henry's policy was peace ; Lewis was averse to 
war, having neither skill nor resources. All Henry's 
French campaigns, then, during this period were occa- 
sioned by the circumstances which have 
His French been thus stated. The object of the war of 

wars. J 

1 1 56 was, sad to say, the subjugation of 
Geoffrey of Nantes, the king's own brother, who sub- 
mitted to him, after he had taken his castles one by one, 
in the July of that year, and who died two years after. 
The business of 11 58 was to secure the territories that 
Geoffrey had left without heirs, and, that done, to prepare 
for the enforcement of Eleanor's claims on Toulouse. 
The war of Toulouse, with its preparations and results, 



a.d.i 159. Early Years of Henry II. 53 

occupied the greater part of 1 1 59, although the campaign 
itself was short. Henry had assembled his 

• War of 

full court of vassals. William of Warenne, Toulouse, 
the son of Stephen, and Malcolm, King of II59 ' 
Scots, followed him as his liegemen rather than as allies. 
Becket, as his Chancellor, came with an equipment 
not inferior to that of any of his earls and counts. Alto- 
gether it was a very splendid and expensive affair. The 
king marched to Toulouse ; but at Toulouse was his 
enemy, his friend, his lord, his wife's first husband. 
Henry could not proceed to extremes against the man 
whom in his youthful sincerity he still recognized as his 
feudal lord, and whose personal humiliation would have 
degraded the idea of royalty, of which he was himself so 
proud. So he left Becket to continue the siege and re- 
turned westward. The French were attempting a diver- 
sion on the Norman frontier. Toulouse, therefore, was 
not taken. Towards the end of the year a truce was 
made with Lewis, and early in 11 60 the truce was turned 
into an alliance. But the alliance brought with it the 
seeds of new and more fatal divisions. 

We have noted the way in which Henry used his 
children as his tools or as the counters of his game. He 
began with them very young. His eldest 
child, William, to whom we have seen ho- sons and 
mage done immediately after the corona- 
tion, died very soon after, and Henry, who was born in 
February, n 55, and had received conditional homage 
when he was two months old, now became the heir ap- 
parent. The next child was a daughter, Matilda, born 
in 1 1 56; in 11 57 Richard was born, at either Oxford or 
Woodstock ; Geoffrey, the next brother, came in 1 1 58 ; 
then Eleanor, in 1162 ; Johanna, in 1 165 ; and last of all 
John, in 1167. On Henry's attempts to provide for these 



54 The Eai'ly Plantagenets. a.d. 1160. 

children hangs nearly all the interest of his foreign wars ; 
and the marriages of the daughters form a key to the 
history of the foreign policy of England and her alliances 
for many ages. 

The game may be considered to begin with Richard, 
who at the age of a year was betrothed to the daughter 
His projects °f Raymond of Barcelona and Queen Petro- 
<,f marriage nilla of Aragon. This was done, it appears, 
to bind the count and queen either to help 
or to stand neutral in the war of Toulouse. The be- 
trothal came to nothing. Henry, the elder brother, was 
the next victim. The peace of 1160 assigned him, at the 
age of five, as husband to the little lady Margaret of 
France, Lewis's daughter by his second wife, Constance 
of Castile. This marriage was not only to seal the 
peace but to secure to Henry a good frontier between 
Normandy and France. The castles of Gisors and 
Neafle, and the county of the Vexin, which lay between 
Normandy and Paris, were to be Margaret's portion, not 
to be surrendered until the marriage could be formally 
celebrated, and until then to remain in the custody of 
the Templars. Henry, however, did not stick at trifles. 
The little Margaret had been put into his hands to learn 
English or Norman ways. He had the marriage cele- 
brated between the two children, and then prevailed on 
Marriage of tne Templars to surrender the castles. Lewis 
Henry and never forgave that, and the Vexin quarrel 

Margaret. - . 

remained an open sore during the rest of the 
reign ; for after the death of the younger Henry his 
rights were transferred to Richard by another unhappy 
marriage contract with another of Lewis's daughters. 
Practically the question was settled by the betrayal of 
Gisors to Philip, by Gilbert of Vacceuil, whilst Richard _ 
was in Palestine; but the struggle continued until John 



a.d. 1161. Early Years of Henry II. 55 

finally lost not only the Vexin but Normandy itself and 
all else that he had to lose. For the present, however, 
the outbreak of war, to which Henry's sharp practice 
led, was only a brief one. Henry was successful, and 
peace was concluded in August, 1161. The year 1162 
he spent in Normandy, holding councils and organizing 
the administration of the duchy, as he had done that of 
the kingdom in his first year. 

During the whole of this long absence from England 
the country was governed by Richard de Lucy and Earl 
Robert of Leicester, as the king's chief jus- 
tices or justiciars; the little Henry taking furfng^he 
his father's place on occasions of ceremony, k b n fn e 
when he happened to be in England. The 
historians of these years tell us little or nothing of what 
was going on. There were no wars or revolts ; abbots 
and bishops died and their successors were appointed ; 
notably the good Archbishop Theobald, to whom Henry 
owed so much, died in 1161, and Becket succeeded him. 

From other sources we learn that Henry's legal re- 
forms were in full operation. He had restored the ma- 
chinery of the Exchequer, and with it the 
method of raising revenue which had been ^fofms S ° f 
arranged in his grandfather's time. That 
revenue arose, firstly, from the ferm or rent of the coun- 
ties ; that is, the sum paid by the sheriffs as royal stew- 
ards'; by way of composition for the rents of 
royal lands in the shire, and the ordinary the revenue, 
proceeds of the fines and other payments 
made in the ancient shiremoot or county court ; secondly, 
from the Danegeld, a tax of two shillings on the hide of 
land, originally levied as tribute to the Danes under 
Ethelred, but continued, like the Income Tax, as a con- 
venient ordinary resource ; thirdly, from the feudal reve- 



56 The Early Plantage nets, a.d. 1162, 

nue, arising from the profits of marriages, wardships, 
transfers of land, successions, and the like, and from the 
aids demanded by the king from the several barons or 
communities that owed him feudal support. To these 
we may add a fourth source, the proceeds of courts of 
justice, held by the king's officers to determine causes 
for which the ancient popular courts were not thought 
competent; such as began with suits between the king's 
immediate dependents, and by degrees extended to all 
the civil and criminal jurisdiction of the country. Judi- 
cature and finance were thus bound very closely to- 
gether; the sheriffs were not only tax-gatherers but ex- 
ecutors of the law, and every improvement in the law 
Administra- was ma -de to increase the income of the Ex- 
tion of chequer. To this we must attribute the 

justice. ± 

means taken by Henry to administer justice 
in the counties, sending some of the chief members of 
his judicial staff, year after year, through the country, 
forcing their way into the estates and castles of the most 
despotic nobles, and spreading the feeling of security 
together with the sense of loyalty, and the conviction 
that ready justice was well worth the money that it 
seemed to cost. Besides the revival of the provincial 
judicature in this shape Henry, from the beginning of 
the reign, added form and organization to the proceedings 
of his supreme court of justice, which comes into pro- 
minence later on. 

Next to these his most important measure was the 
institution or expansion of what is called Scutage. Ac- 
cording to the ancient English law every 
freeman was bound to serve in arms for the 
defence of his country. That principle Henry only 
meddled with so far as to direct and improve it. But, 
according to the feudal custom, quite irrespective of this, 



ch. in. Early Years of Henry II. 57 

every man who held land to the amount of twenty pounds' 
worth of annual value was obliged to perform or furnish 
the military service of a knight to his immediate lord. 
This kept the barons always at the head of bodies of 
trained knights, who might be regarded as ultimately a 
part of the king's army, but in case of a rebellion would 
probably fight for their immediate lord. Henry, by al- 
lowing his vassals to commute their military service for 
a money payment, went a long way to disarm this very 
untrustworthy body ; and with the money so raised he 
hired stipendiaries, with whom he fought his Continental 
wars. He began to act on this principle in the first year 
of his reign, when he made the bishops, notwithstanding 
strong objections from Archbishop Theobald, pay scu- 
tage for their lands held by knight-service. But in 1 1 59 
he extended the plan very widely, and took money in- 
stead of service from the whole of his dominions, com- 
pelling his chief lords to serve in person, but hiring, with 
the scutages of the inferior tenants, a splendid army of 
mercenaries, with which he fought the war of Toulouse. 

By thus disarming the feudal potentates, and forcing 
his judges into their courts, he completed the process by 
which he intended to humiliate them. Feudalism in 
England, after the reign of Henry II., never reared its 
head so high as to be again formidable. 

Other results incidentally followed from the special 
measures by which this great end was secured ; the more 
thorough amalgamation of the still unfused nationalities 
of Norman and Englishman followed from a state of 
things in which both were equal before the 

Incr63.sc of 

law, and the distinctions or privileges of national 
blood were no longer recognized among free umt y- 
men. The diminution of military power in the hands 
of the territorial lords left the maintenance of peace 

E 



58 The Early Plantagenets. ch. iv. 

and the defence of the country to be undertaken, as it 
had been of old, by the community of free Englishmen, 
locally trained, and armed according to their substance. 
This created or revived a strong warlike spirit for all 
national objects, without inspiring the passion for mili- 
tary exploit or glory, which is the bane of what is called 
a military nation. On the national character, thus in a 
state of formation, the idea that law is and ought to be 
supreme was now firmly impressed; and although the 
further development of the governmental system fur- 
nished employment for Henry's later years, and was 
never neglected, even in the busiest and unhappiest 
period of his reign, it may be fairly said that the founda- 
tion was laid in the comparative peace and industry of 
these early years. At the age of thirty Henry had been 
nearly nine years a king, and had already done a work 
for which England can never cease to be grateful. 



CHAPTER IV. 

HENRY II. AND THOMAS BECKET. 

The English Church — Schools of Clergy — Rise of Becket — Quarrel 
with the King- Exile— Death. 

The history of the Church of England is during many 
ages the chief part of the history of the nation ; through- 
out it is a very large part of the history of 
ciT ^. ngllsh the people. Their ways of thinking, their 
system of morals, their intellectual growth, 
their intercourse with the world outside, cannot be under- 
stood but by an examination of the vicissitudes of their 
religious history ; and it plays a scarcely less important 



ch. iv. Henry II and Thomas Becket. 59 

part in the development of their political institutions. 
Christianity in England, looked at by the eye of history, 
means not only the knowledge of God and His salvation 
by Christ Jesus ; it carries with it, besides, all that is im • 
plied in civilization, national growth and national unity. 

When the English, under the seven or eight struggling 
and quarrelling dynasties whose battles form for centu- 
ries all the recorded life of the island, were 
seven or eight distinct nationalities, — some Heptarchy 6 
of them tribally connected, some of them 
using allied systems of law, but otherwise having scarce- 
ly anything in common beyond dialects of a common 
growing language, — altogether without any common 
organization or the desire of forming one, — the conver- 
sion in the seventh century taught them to regard them- 
selves as one people. They were formed by St. Gregory 
and Archbishop Theodore into an organized Christian 
Church, the several dioceses of which represented the 
several kingdoms or provinces of their divided state. 

Thus arranged in one or, later on, in two ecclesiasti- 
cal provinces, the wise men of the several tribes learned 
to act in concert; the tribes themselves, 

. -ii • • c National 

casting aside their tribal superstitions tor a unity fi^st 
common worship, found how few real obsta- 
cles there were to prevent them from acting as one 
people ; and from the date of the conversion the tendency 
of the kingdoms was to unite rather than to break up. Al- 
though this process was slow — for it went on for four centu- 
ries, and was scarcely completed when the Norman Con- 
quest forced the mass of varied national elements into 
cohesion — "t was a uniform tendency, contrasted with, and 
counteracting numerous and varying tendencies towards 
separation. The Church built up the unity of the State, 
and in so doing it built up the unity of the nation. 



60 The Early Plantagenets. ch. iv. 

And one result of this was to make the Church ex- 
tremely powerful in the state. There was but one arch- 
bishop of Canterbury when there were 

Great power x ' . 

of ihe seven kings ; that archbishop s word was 

cergy. listened to with respect and obeyed in all 

the seven kingdoms, in any one of which the command 
of a strange king would have been received with con- 
tempt. The archbishop was exceedingly powerful, both 
in Kent, his peculiar diocese, and by his alliances with 
the states and churches of the Continent ; and the dio- 
cesan bishops were each, in his own district, a match for 
their kings, because they knew that in any struggle they 
could depend on the friendship of all their fellows out- 
side their special kingdom, much more than the peccant 
king could depend on the assistance of his fellow-kings. 
They could meet in one council, whilst the several kings 
could only collect their own Witenagemots ; they were, 
in fact, the rulers of the Church of England, whilst the 
kings were only kings of Kent, Mercia and Wessex. 
And when the kingdoms became one under the de 
scendants of Egbert the prelates retained the same 
power. 

Never, perhaps, in any country were Church and 

State more closely united than they were in Anglo-Saxon 

times in England; for they were united, 

Alliance of ° . . ......... 

Church and with careful recognition of their distinct 
functions, not, as in Spain and some other 
lands, confounding what should have been kept dis- 
tinct, or making the prelates great temporal lords, or 
the national deliberations mere ecclesiastical councils. 
The prelates, the bishops and abbots, formed, as wise 
men, qualified by their spiritual office to be counsellors, 
a very large proportion of the Witenagemot, the ruling 
council of the kingdom ; in every county the bishop sat 



CH. iv. Henry II and Thomas Becket. £i 

in the courts with the sheriff, to declare the Divine law, 
as the sheriff did the secular law. The clergy were, for 
all moral offences, under the same rules as the laity, 
save that it was the bishop who in the common court at- 
tended to their case and saw substantial justice enforced. 
So matters went on until the Conquest, the changes 
which took place in the meantime affecting the spiritual 
discipline and character rather than the constitutional 
position of the clergy ; making them, that is, more or 
less secular in their views and aims, but not lessening 
their power. Nay, every change strengthened rather 
than weakened their position. Dunstan was the prime 
minister of the last mighty king ; but under Canute the 
prelates were even more powerful than under Edgar ; 
and we can understand from the history of the Conquest 
that it was not the fault of the English-born bishops that 
William the Norman obtained the victory in the council 
as well as in the field. 

The Conquest had some very marked effects in this 
region of life. In the first place, it was absolutely neces- 
sary for William to have the clergy on his 
side; if he had not he would have nothing the Conquest 
to form a counterpoise for the power of the church 
barons, which was already threatening, nor 
would he have been able to get hold of the people. He 
wanted to be a national king — the protector of the na- 
tional Church, the king of the English people. In the 
hope of securing the support of the bishops he waited for 
three years before he took summary measures against 
those who were still secretly or overtly hostile. When 
patience was seen to be unavailing he deposed Arch- 
bishop Stigand, no doubt at the instigation of the Pope, 
but in his place he set, not a Norman, who would have 
alienated the people, but a wise Italian, under whose 



62 The Early Plantagenets. ch. rv. 

counsels the Norman king and the English people were 
drawn together almost as closely as the king and 
people had been before the Normans came. Two effects 
resulted directly from this. The Conquest of England 
coincides in point of time with the great 

TheHilde- . ' • ' V TT „ , , ,. . _ S , 

brandine period of the Hildebrandme ideas ; the 

[ reign of Gregory VII. and of the Popes ap- 

pointed by his influence, in which a new interpretation 
was put on the relations of Church and State, and a jea- 
lous equilibrium established or attempted, the result of 
which in France and Germany seemed to be the tying 
of the State to the chariot-wheels of the Church. Of 
such a consummation there was in England no chance 
under William and Lanfranc, but nevertheless the coin- 
cidence in time was not without its consequences. 
England and her Church were drawn into the vortex of 
the Church politics of Europe, and the relations between 
Church and State in England were re-modelled upon 
the new type. The courts of the bishops for the trial of 
clerks were separated from the courts of the sheriffs ; 
the election of prelates was arranged by a sort of com- 
promise between royal power and canonical form ; the 
bishops became barons and held their lands, or a por- 
tion of them, by the new baronial tenure ; and their 
councils were marked off by a much broader line than 
they had been from the councils of the Witan, or the 
courts of the king. Then, too, a new concordat was 
arranged to regulate the exercise of the papal power, 
for which, before the Conquest, the English had had a 
respectful but very distant regard. The king insisted 
that when there were rival popes he should 

Church . 

policy of the be the judge to determine which should be 

accepted in England; no suit or appeal 

should be carried to Rome without his leave ; none oi 



ch. iv. Henry II and Thomas Becket- 63 

his servants should be excommunicated against his sove- 
reign will ; no legate should land without his permission ; 
no ecclesiastical legislation should be enforced without 
his approval. 

Within these limits the bishops had a great deal of 
new power ; and, as they succeeded in a great measure 
to the implicit faith and obedience which Thg 

the nation had given to their own English Norman 

1 1 Bishops. 

bishops, they were able to exert a very strong 
influence towards keeping the nation together. They 
were kept by the king upon his side, as opposed to the 
barons, and securing them he secured the nation. This 
is clear even in the history of Anselm, who, although 
opposed to and persecuted by the king, never forgot his 
duty to the people so far as to take part with the barons 
against him. Besides the bishops, however, there was in 
the monasteries a great reserve fund of national feeling ; 
and, up to the reign of Henry II., what little we can 
trace of English feeling is to be traced in the writings of 
the monks ; they kept alive an English sentiment as 
distinct from the new national idea that was to blend 
English and Norman, the king and the bishops more 
distinctly representing the latter. 

These things being so, we are able to understand what 
it was that gave the prelates the great moral weight they 
possessed in Stephen's reign, and to perceive 
how vast was the importance of maintain- Jei|n ephenS 
ing the alliance between them and the 
crown. We learn too how the many streams of influ- 
ence which they guided reacted upon the clerical body 
itself, and produced several distinct schools or classes of 
ecclesiastical character. In the first place, the kings 
had taken prelates to be their ministers, 

Secular 

and had promoted their ministers to be school. 



64 The Early Plantagenets. ch. iv. 

prelates. Bishop Roger of Salisbury was not only a 
powerful ecclesiastic but the royal justiciar, the head of 
all the courts and the treasurer of all the money of the 
king. Under him was a set of clerks who would set the 
fashion for one school of the clergy, secular in mind and 
aim and manners ; often married men, so far as their 
right to marry can be accounted valid, canons of cathe- 
drals where they provided for their children and made 
estates for themselves ; worthy men most of them, the 
predecessors of the clerical magistrates of this day, far 
greater in quarter sessions and county meetings than in 
convocation or missionary work. That was one very 
strong school — a school that required tender handling 
both politically and ecclesiastically, and in the view of 
which we can understand how important it was for 
Bishop Roger to secure the consent of the Pope and the 
archbishops to his holding secular office. For it is said 
that, worldly man as he was, he refused, as a matter of 
conscience as well as policy, to act as the king's minis- 
ter, without the distinct approval of the saintly Anselm 
and his successors, the archbishops as well as the 
popes. 

A second class was composed of the ecclesiastical 
politicians, men, that is, who were before all things 

Churchmen, of whom Henry of Winchester 
S C ooL aStical is one of the best specimens. These did 

not like the first, sink the clergyman in the 
statesman or the magistrate, and accept preferment as 
the mere reward of political service ; they were not the 
Sadducees but the Pharisees of the time ; they would 
not marry, nor sell livings, nor act against the Pope ; 
whatever secular power they could get they would use 
for the benefit of the Church. To say this is not to con- 
demn them ; they saw in the service of the Church the 



ch. iv. Henry II and Thomas Becket. 65 

clearest and readiest way of serving both God and man. 
These men were in tone and morals a higher set of men 
than the first. They were in close alliance with the see 
of Rome ; they knew far more than the others about the 
state of Christendom generally ; they were scholars, the 
founders of universities, the protectors of culture ; they 
prevented the Church from becoming thoroughly secu- 
lar ; and, if there was a higher type, it was a type also 
much more liable to be assumed by counterfeits. It is 
a great mistake to undervalue this school. It would 
seem probable that both Archbishop Theobald as well 
as his rival, Henry of Winchester, should be referred to 
it ; it was the party of the Legate, the party that tried to 
introduce the Civil law as a subject of study at Oxford; 
that went abroad to attend councils, that bearded royal 
tyranny in Church and State. 

And there was a higher type — a type we will call it 
rather than a school, because the graces that compose 
it are not learned in men's schools, but 
under the discipline of a Divine master ; schooif'™ Ua 
the pure religious type, which we find, with 
some alloy, in such men as Anselm ; the meek and 
quiet spirit that has a zeal for righteousness and a love 
of souls ; that will bear all things for itself, but rise up 
to avenge the cause of the helpless. It is the noblest 
type ; to which belong the true hero, the true martyr, 
the saint indeed 1 ; but it is a type which to man's eye is 
the most easily counterfeited by the popular hero, the 
self-advertising saint, the professed candidate for mock, 
martyrdom. 

Such, then, are the three types of character which 
perhaps mark all ages of the Church, but which come 
out most markedly and distinctly in the present period ; 
and the career of Thomas Becket, the hero of this part 



66 The Early Plantagenets. ch. iv. 

of our national history, cannot be understood without a 
clear idea of them. 

For Becket was a very extraordinary man. In what- 
ever he did he acted on Solomon's maxim and did it 
f with his might ; and, as he passed through 

Thomas each of the phases of character that mark 

these three schools, his career may be 
divided accordingly. In the first phase he was a secular 
Churchman. He had been trained in the house of his 
father, a London merchant of Norman blood ; he had 
been schooled in accounts by Master Octonummi ; he 
had learned accomplishments in the hall of Richer de 
l'Aigle ; and then had entered Archbishop Theobald's 
family as secretary. There, no doubt, he got his know- 
ledge of civil and canon law, and learned the business 
of a diplomatist. Although Theobald was an ecclesias- 
tical politician of the second stamp, he did not as yet 
impress that character on Becket. John of Salisbury, 
who also was Theobald's secretary, took some such im- 
pression from him, and shows it in a constant criticism 
of Becket from the point of view natural to the Church- 
man pure and simple. Still Becket learned that side of 
life during these experiences. With this training he was 
qualified not only to conduct the negotiations that se- 
cured the crown to Henry II., but, when he was made 

Chancellor, as he was at the king's acces- 
Chanceiior. sion, he was able to manage and extend the 

duties of his office, magnifying it as no 
other Chancellor had done before. The Chancellor was 
a sort of secretary of state for all departments ; he was 
not so powerful in himself, or in his constitutional posi- 
tion, as the Justiciar, but he had nearly as much real 
power through his hold on the king, whose letters he 
wrote, whose accounts he kept, all whose formal busi- 



ch. iv. Henry II and Thomas Becket. 67 

ness he recorded, and all whose irksome duties he took 
off his hands. We find Becket, then, in this relation to 
Henry, who had no great love of public pomp, and was 
willing enough that the Chancellor should share the ex- 
pense. Becket at this time appears to us as a very 
splendid officer, with a great retinue of knights and a 
great revenue from his churches ; an indefatigable 
letter-writer, an efficient judge, a cunning financier; as 
yet not a great Churchman in politics, for the plan of 
taxing the bishops by scutage was set on foot by him, in 
opposition to the archbishop, his old patron. 

Henry might well think himself fortunate in securing 
such a minister ; he threw himself with entire confi- 
dence upon him, and there can be little 
doubt that Becket is to a great degree an- fidence in him. 
swerable for the grievous change in Henry's 
character that followed their quarrel. To anticipate, 
however: when Henry made his Chancellor Archbishop 
of Canterbury he contemplated securing, at the head of 
the Church, a friend who would sympathize with his 
statesmanlike designs, who was sure to be able to sway 
the clergy, and who would repay his unbounded confi- 
dence with grateful and straightforward service. But he 
was sadly disappointed. Becket was not the man to ex- 
change his splendid position as Chancellor for the life 
of an ordinary commonplace archbishop. If he un- 
dertook the office he would act up to the highest idea of 
its requirements. Never was there a more sudden trans- 
formation. One day he is, like Roger of Becket be- 
Salisbury, hearing causes and framing- his comes arch- 

. . ° bishop. 

budget, counting out his money, or review- 
ing his knights ; the next he is Lanfranc in miniature, 
or not so much Lanfranc as Anselm, or Henry of Win- 
chester rather than Anselm ; — the high ecclesiastic pure 



6& The Early Plantagenets. ch. iv. 

and simple, coveting the Papal legation, hand-and-glove 
with the Pope, full of ideas based on the canon law, 
which his friend Gratian had just codified in the Decre- 
tum ; an unflinching and unreasoning supporter of all 
clerical claims, right or wrong, wholesome or unwhole- 
some, consistent or inconsistent with his previous life 
and opinions. 

A third phase awaits him. In his new character he is 
pretty sure to quarrel with the king ; he does so, and, 
D . . however just his cause, he does it in a way 

Becket in ... 

his later that does not prejudice us in his favor ; his 

object is studiously to put Henry in the 
wrong; his conduct in the last degree exasperating. 
The second form of clerical life has served its time. 
Now he comes out as a candidate for martyrdom. In 
this also he will do what he has to do with all his might. 
Unmindful of the early friendship of the king, from 
whom certainly he had never met with anything but 
kindness and the most familiar courtesy, he declares 
that he is in danger of his life ; he insists on celebrating 
mass at the altar of the protomartyr and on appearing 
at court carrying his own cross, partly as a safeguard 
against violence which he has no reason to apprehend, 
partly in an awful miserable parody of the great day of 
•Calvary. All the rest of his career is the same — a mor- 
bid craving after the honors of martyrdom, or confessor- 
ship at the least, a crafty policy for embroiling Henry 
with his many enemies, combined with a plausible alle- 
gation that it is all for his good and that of the Church. 
There is in him some greatness of character- still, some 
sincerity, we will hope, but no self-renunciation, no self- 
restraint, no earnest striving for peace; little, very little, 
care of the flock over which he was overseer, and which 
was left shepherdless. 



ch. iv. Henry II and Thomas Beckel. 69 

On a calm review of his life it seems that Becket was 
most at home in his first position ; that in the second he 
was ill at ease and awkward, divided between two aims 
and failing in conduct as well as in cause. The third 
phase becomes him least of all ; and it is only by con- 
sidering the horrible sufferings of his death that we 
pardon him for the conduct that brought the pains of 
death upon him. 

Briefly to recapitulate the stages of the career of this 
man, to whom even his enemies allow the title of great- 
ness : Becket was Chancellor from the accession of 
Henry, in 11 54, to his consecration as Archbishop of 
Canterbury, in June, 1162. The king was still in France 
when Theobald died. It was regarded as a somewhat 
unprecedented measure to make so secular a person as 
Thomas archbishop, but Henry's influence and his own 
were supreme ; he had accepted the dignity with mis- 
giving, but having accepted he did not hesi- 
tate about the measures to be taken for se- 2chbis£J! S 
curing it; the consent of the bishops and 
monks was readily yielded, and one who was, so far as 
his place of birth could make him, an Englishman, sat 
once more on the throne of Augustine. All difficulties 
were smoothed for him ; he had not to go to Rome for 
his pall ; it arrived a few weeks after his consecration ; 
and he had six months' quiet and peace in his new dig- 
nity before the king came home. 

This was on the 25th of January, 1163. Henry found, 
as was to be expected, that considerable arrears of busi- 
ness had accrued during his long absence. 
He was meditating a new expedition to Sums from 

Wales in order to enforce the homage due France, 

1103. 
to him and his heir-apparent from the Welsh 

princes. The trial of Henry of Essex, who had been 



70 The Early Plantagenets. ch. iv. 

accused of treason and cowardice by Robert de Mont- 
fort, for letting fall the standard at the battle of Consilt, 
and who was to defend himself by battle, was also immi 
nent ; and already some apprehensions were felt as to 
Becket tne conduct of the archbishop. He had re- 

^ i ^ lsthe signed, much in opposition to Henry's 
wishes, his office of Chancellor on his ap- 
pointment as Archbishop, and had procured from the 
justiciar a full acquittance for all sums which he had 
received for the king during his tenure of office, espe- 
cially the sums arising from the revenue of vacant 
churches, a source of royal income which was specially 
administered by the Chancellor. But he had not re- 
signed the great manors of Eye and Berkhampstead, 
which were usually held as part of the endowment of the 
Chancellor ; these it is possible he intended to hold only 
until his successor was appointed, but no successor was 
appointed, and the strange spectacle was seen of the 
Archbishop of Canterbury holding two of the finest pieces 
of the secular patronage of the crown without any offi- 
cial claim to them. 

In another point he also showed himself somewhat 

grasping, or at all events made enemies at a moment 

when his experience should have taught 

the feudi° eS nim to be more politic. Many of the old 

rights of his possessions of his see had come into the 

see. r 

hands of laymen, who were negligent in per- 
forming their services, and probably wished to throw off 
the yoke of the archbishop altogether. In order to en- 
force his rights he acted in a way which, justifiable as it 
was, was nevertheless imprudent ; the result was a royal 
inquest as to the archiepiscopal fiefs ; and, as the arch- 
bishop was already becoming unpopular, the verdict of 
the jury robbed him of some rights that might other- 



a.d. 1 1 63. Henry II. and Thomas Be cket. 71 

wise have been successfully maintained. In all this, 
however, he had no coolness with the king. Henry felt 
the resignation of the Chancellorship as a personal 
wrong ; for although in the empire, where the king 
looked for precedents, the office of Arch-chancellor was 
held by the three great metropolitans of Germany, Becket 
had followed the usage almost unbroken in England in 
resigning ; but there was nothing like an open quarrel. 
The spring of the year passed without one. In March 
the fate of Henry of Essex was decided ; he was defeated 
in the battle trial, and the king, greatly against his will 
it was said — for he believed that the fall of the standard 
at Consilt was accidental — was obliged by the Norman 
law to declare his estates forfeited. Henry of Essex 
retired into a monastery, and so Henry lost one of his 
best friends. 

Immediately after the king went on his second Welsh 
war, a sort of military demonstration marked second 
by no great victory or defeat, and on the 1st Welsh war, 
of July called a great court at Woodstock to 
witness the homage of the princes. The King of Scots 
made his appearance at this council, and took the oath 
of fealty to the little heir to the crown, 
Henry, who was now eight years old. This Woodstock, 
was the first opportunity that the archbishop 
had of declaring his new attitude. He had been to visit 
the Pope, Alexander III., at Tours. The Pope was in 
exile from his see ; the Emperor Frederick had refused 
to acknowledge him, and had set up an anti-Pope. 
Henry and Lewis, the former probably acting by Becket's 
advice, had in 1 161 recognized Alexander as the Catholic 
Pope, and Tours, where he was holding the council at 
which Becket attended, was within the dominions of 
Henry. We can only suppose that the sight of the Pope 



72 The Early Plantagenets. a.d 1163. 

kindled Becket's zeal, not so much against his own lord 
who was the Pope's friend^ as against the secular power 
in general, of which he had been hitherto a devoted 
servant. Anyhow he came back from Tours prepared, 
on the first question, ecclesiastical or civil, which might 
arise, to take the lead of what might be called the con- 
stitutional opposition ; an idea which is, for the first time 
since the Norman Conquest, realized in the course he 
now adopted. 

As we should expect from our knowledge of later 
crises of the kind, the bone of contention was found in 
Becket th e financial budget of the year Henry was, 

opposes the as usua i busy with his reforms ; and al- 

king on a ' i ' 

financial though he was an honest reformer and had 

a true genius for organization, he liked best 
those methods of reform that helped to fill the treasury. 
The administration of the sheriffs was during the later 
part of the reign a frequent subject of legislative ordi- 
nance, and the question which now arose was connected 
with it. The sheriffs had been used to collect from every 
hide of land in their counties two shillings annually. It 
was probable that out of this a fixed sum was paid to the 
king under the name of Danegeld ; certainly the Dane- 
geld was collected at that rate ; and as the sums paid 
into the Exchequer under that name were very small 
compared with the extent of land that paid the tax, it is 
probable that the sheriffs paid a fixed composition, and 
retained the surplus as wages for their services in the 
execution of judicial work and police. Our authorities 
merely tell us that the king proposed to take away this 
money from the sheriffs and bring it into the general 
account of his revenue. Thomas opposed this; declared 
that the tax should riot go into the king's coffers, that 
the sheriffs should not lose, that the lands of his Church 



a. d. 1 1 63. Henry II and Thomas Becket. 73 

should pay the tax no more ; and he seems to have 
prevailed, although we have no positive record to that 
effect. 

Two most important points stand out here. This is 
the first case of any express opposition being made to 
the king's financial dealings since the Con- Constitu . 
quest. Until now, whenever money was tionai 

, , , . . i • j -i importance 

wanted, the royal necessities were laid be- f this act. 
fore the national council, the assembly of 
bishops, earls, and great vassals, and others, and the 
method was explained by which they were to be satis- 
fied. If he wanted to marry his daughter, or to knight 
his son, or to tax his towns, he said how much he 
wanted, and it was paid. Here, however, we find the 
archbishop objecting to the royal dealings with the 
Danegeld, and thus asserting the right of the national 
council to refuse as well as to bestow money. A second 
point is, that although ever since the reign of Ethelred, 
with the exception of a few years of Ed- 
ward the Confessor— who had, as the Abolition of 

Danegeld. 

legend ran, seen the devil sitting on the 
money-bags, and had, therefore, abolished the tax — 
and certainly ever since the days of the Conqueror, this 
odious impost had been levied, from this time it ceases 
to appear by this name in the rolls of the revenue. 
Henry II. devised other ways of getting money, but the 
Danegeld appears no more ; and thus the first-fruit of 
the first constitutional opposition is the abolition of the 
most ancient property-tax, imposed as a bribe for the 
Danes. We may well imagine how angry Henry would 
be at this interference, coming from the man who had 
hitherto been his right hand in all his reforms. 

The courtiers saw it, and they began to raise little 
suits against Becket on little matters by which they 

F 



74 The Eai'ly Plantagenets. A.D.1163. 

. , , might harass him, and, like true courtiers, 

Bcclcct s 

new accelerate the fall of a falling man. Such 

in particular were John the Marshal, who 
raised a claim touching one of the archiepiscopal 
manors, and William of Eynesford, who claimed the 
patronage of one of the archbishop's livings, and was 
rashly excommunicated by Becket, contrary to the cus- 
tom which forbade the excommunication of 

Council at .,._--,. . . . 

Westnvn- a tenant-in-chief of the king without the 

ster, 11 3. king's license. Three months, however, 

passed away ; and on the 1st of October the king called 
a great council at Westminster. 

In the process of his reforms he was startled by the 
absolute immunity accorded to the crimes of the clergy, 
or persons pretending to be clergymen, through the 
double jurisdiction of the lay and Church courts which 
was introduced by William the Conqueror. Any clerk 
who committed a crime could be demanded by his 
bishop from the officers of secular justice, and sentenced 
by him to ecclesiastical punishment, which, according 
to the law of William, was to be enforced by the secu- 
lar arm. But, in fact, so much afraid were the bishops 
of any clerk being tried by the lay courts, and so 
jealous were the lay officers of being called on to en- 
force the ecclesiastical punishments, that the whole sys- 
tem broke down. Thieves and murderers who called 
themselves clerks were demanded by the bishops and 
sentenced to penances and deprivation of orders, two 
punishments at which they could afford to laugh. Henry 
proposed that, when such prisoners were taken and 
found guilty, they should be delivered to the bishops to 
be spiritually punished, and then to the secular officers, 
to have sufficient punishment, to be hanged, or blinded, 
or imprisoned as the mild laws of the period ordered. 



A..D. 1 1 63. Henry II and Thomas Becket. 75 

Thomas would not hear of this — one pun- 
ishment was enough for one fault ; if the defends the 
clergyman was a thief, and proved so to be, clerical 

°* r ' immunities. 

let him be degraded — that was enough ; if 
he broke the law again, the law might have him, for he 
was after degradation entitled to the privileges of a cler- 
gyman no more. Henry grew very angry at this foolish 
and imprudent proposal. Such, he said, had not been 
the law in the time of his grandfather, the great king 
Henry the Elder, the lion of righteousness. He would 
not submit, but would enforce the ancient 
rights and customs of the realm as his appeals to 
grandfather had done. But what, it was the ancient 

' customs. 

asked, were those customs ? The reign of 
Stephen had witnessed a total abeyance of secular law, 
and had listened to very extraordinary assertions of 
ecclesiastical right and liberty. Let the ancient customs 
be first ascertained, and then it would be time to say 
whether or no the clergy and laity could act together. 
Becket allowed the bishops to promise to observe these 
customs ' saving their order.' Henry declared that that 
meant nothing. The assembly was broken up in wrath. 
The king ordered the manors of Eye and Berkhamp- 
stead to be surrendered, and the archbishop in two or 
three later interviews sought in vain for a reconciliation. 
Whether in this Henry acted from passionate indigna- 
tion, or because he saw that Becket had taken on him- 
self the maintenance of the extreme views propounded 
by the canonists as to the immunity of 
spiritual men, we cannot now venture to Henry's 

1 motives. 

determine. The breach between the two was 
never healed ; both probably saw that it never could even 
be compromised. The dispute had its real basis in the 
difficulty of adjusting legal and spiritual relations, which 



7 6 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1164 

even at the present day seems no nearer receiving a per 
manent settlement. 

Soon after Christmas another court was held, at Oar* 
endon, one of those forest palaces at which, as at Wood- 
stock, Henry and his sons used to call the 

Council of ,, , , ■_. .... 

Clarendon, counsellors together, and diversify business 
ll64- with sport. It was called for the purpose of 

finishing the business began at Westminster. The 
archbishop was asked whether he would accept the 
ancient customs ; he declined to do it without making 
conditions. The king then ordered that the ' recognition 
of the customs ' should be read. This was the report of 
the great committee appointed to ascertain and commit 
them to writing, a committee which nominally contained 
nearly all the bishops and barons, but which Becket de- 
clared to consist only of Richard de Lucy, the justiciar, 
and Jocelin de Bailleul, a French lawyer. This report 
was the celebrated Constitutions of Claren- 

Constitu- . ... 

tionsof don, a sort of code or concordat, in sixteen 

C arendon. chapters, which included not merely a sys- 
tem of definite rules to regulate the disposal of the crimi- 
nal clergy, but a method of proceeding by which all 
quarrels that arose between the clergy and laity might 
be satisfactorily heard and determined. Questions of 
advowsons, of disputed estates, of excommunication, the 
rights of the spiritual courts over laymen, and of lay 
courts over spiritual men, the rights of the crown in va- 
cant churches and in the nomination to benefices, and 
the right of appeal in ecclesiastical causes, were all de- 
fined. No one was to carry a suit farther than the archi- 
episcopal court ; that is, no one was to appeal to the 
Pope without the king's leave. Prelates and parsons 
were not to quit the kingdom without license. The 
sons of rustics or villeins were not to be ordained with- 



a.d. 1 1 64. Henry II and Thomas Becket. 77 

out leave of the lords on whose lands they were born. 
Many similar customs were recorded which show that 
Henry had determined to set the jurisprudence of the 
kingdom, as touching laymen and clergy alike, on a just 
and equal basis ; no unfairness towards the spiritual es- 
tate was intended, but simply the extinction or restric- 
tion of the immunities, the existence of which threw the 
whole system into disorder. An appeal to Rome must 
not be allowed to paralyze the whole ecclesiastical juris- 
diction, any more than an assertion that the murderer 
or the murdered man —for the immunity told both ways 
— was a clerk, should be allowed to insure the escape 
and impunity of the murderer. Becket was 
perhaps, at the first sight of these Consti- Becket's 

. . . conduct. 

tutions, inclined or, as he would have said, 
tempted to yield. He accepted the Constitutions. Al- 
most as soon as he had done so he drew back ; either 
he recalled his concession or refused to set his seal to 
the acceptance, or in some way recanted. We have no 
entirely trustworthy evidence ; but it would seem he de- 
clared that he had sinned, that he would go to Rome, that 
he would resign his see, that he would not act as arch- 
bishop without first receiving special absolution. 

All this had no ether effect than to exasperate Henry 
the more, and to encourage the rapidly increasing crowd 
of Becket's enemies. Unfortunately we have 

, ., r .. . , Council of 

no details tor the next six months, save that Northamp- 
the archbishop once or twice saw the king ton ' " 4 ' 
in vain. In October, 1164, at Northampton, the cloud 
finally broke. Becket's enemies saw their way to crush 
him altogether, and Henry yielded to them. The council 
was formally summoned ; all the persons who held of 
the king directly — that is, who were subject to no lord 
coming between them and the king— were duly invited ; 



78 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. i 164- 

the greater barons probably, as had been usual under 
Henry I., and as the Great Charter afterwards enjoined, 
by special letters ; the minor ones by a general summons 
made known through the sheriff in each shire. It was 
to the archbishop that the first letter of summons ought 
by ancient rule to have been directed. In 
of iKet stead of that he received a writ through the 

Sheriff of Kent ordering him to present him- 
self at Northampton to answer the complaint of John 
the Marshal. 

However informal this was, Becket complied, rather 
than by absenting himself from the court to leave his 
„. ... cause in hands he could not trust. He 

His trial. 

attended, and was overwhelmed. First he 
was sentenced to pay 500 marks to John the Marshal, 
who was declared to have proved his claim against him. 
Then he was called on to present the accounts of the 
Chancery, of which he had been acquitted by a general 
discharge when he became archbishop. He now put 
on the aspect of a martyr, and declared himself ready to 
die for the rights of his Church. Henry and his agents 
declared that it was the person, not the prelate, who was 
aimed at ; that they were not assailing the rights of the 
Church but vindicating the laws of the land, The bish- 
ops advised unconditional submission, which would, no 
doubt have been the wisest course, for it would have dis- 
armed the king without conceding any matter of princi- 
ple ; for Henry was not the man to make an extreme 
use of victory, and might still perhaps have been induced 
to act with moderation. Instead of this, as Henry grew 
more peremptory Thomas grew more provoking ; at last 
he declared himself really in danger, turned and fled. 

He went off in disguise from Northampton, and, after 
His flight. several trying adventures, landed in Flam 



r-1169. Henry II and Thomas Becket 79 

ders, whence he made his way to join the pope at Sens, 
and thence to Pontigny. 

It would be a tedious task to trace the minute circum- 
stances of Becket' s life during the next six years; they 
are somewhat obscure, and the large number of undated 
letters of the period makes even the sequence of the 
mam events puzzling. The upshot of the stor> ^ bnefly 
this, -At Pontigny Becket remained until Henry threa 
tened the whole Cistercian body if they did His exile, 

not expel him; in consequence of that he 
threw himself on the friendship of Lewis VII. who ap- 
pointed as his resting-place the abbey of St. Colombe, 
at Sens There he remained, making occasional jour- 
neys on his own business, until he returned to Canter- 
bury in 1 170. Whilst at Pontigny and Sens he acted up 
to his new character-wore a hair shirt, practised great 
mortifications, and behaved as if he believed himself to 
be undergoing a sort of modified martyrdom. All the 
time he was bringing all the influence which he had to 
bear upon Lewis VII., the Counts of Champagne and 
Flanders, and other potentates, to induce them to take 
up his cause, and either by urging the Pope to extreme 
measures, or by direct negotiation with Henry, to pro- 
cure his honorable recall. The Pope would have given 
anything for peace and quietness, but he could not afford 
to alienate Henry so long as he was on bad terms with 
the Emperor. He sent commissions with legations to 
Normandy, of which Henry disposed either by promises 
or by plausible professions of his own good-will, or by 
substantial presents of the strongest of all the powers of 
silence, a handsome sum of gold. Had he rested here 
he might have been forgiven. But unfortunately for his 
own credit he determined to persecute the archbishop 
in the person of his relations, and by a crueJ Henry's 



80 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1165- 

"""e 1 edict sent many inoffensive families, who 

measures. . 

were connected with Thomas, into exile. 
Then Becket answered with excommunication, includ- 
ing in his ban all the king's closest counsellors, some 
of whom had very little to do with the proceedings 
against him. From time to time Becket saw the king, 
under the wing of Lewis VII. ; once at Montmirail, in 
January, 1169, once at Montmartre, in November of the 
same year. In each case either Henry was hypocritical 
or Becket offensive: we cannot decide. At length a 
new point of quarrel brought about a reconciliation, and 
the reconciliation immediately resulted in Becket's death. 
Before ending the story we may briefly recapitulate 
the chief events of these years, outside the Becket strug- 
gle. In the year 1165, that succeeding the 
^oceldings archbishop's flight from Northampton, 
during the Henry paid a short visit to Normandy, and 

quarrel. J *■ J 

received a proposal from Frederick I. for a 
couple of marriages, a close league of alliance, and a joint 
action against the Pope, who was supposed to be abetting 
Becket. The only result of this was the marriage of 
Alliance Henry's eldest daughter, Matilda, with 

German Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and Ba- 

varia, at this moment Frederick's most in- 
timate friend and kinsman, later on his enemy and vic- 
tim. Neither Henry nor England could be persuaded 
to accept the anti-Pope, but the temporizing action of the 
kind's agents in Germany gave Becket an opportunity 
of involving all alike in a charge of heresy and apos- 
tacy. 

After his return to England, later in the year, Henry 

Third made his third Welsh expedition, which had 

Welsh war, no m ore permanent effect than the former 

ones, as an attempt either to subdue the 



-i 170. Henry II and Thomas Becket. 81 

country or to secure the peace of the borders. It was 

carried out with an amount of cruelty which shows 

Henry's character to have already deteri- Assize of 

orated. After his return he held, early in Clarendon, 

J 1166. 

1 166, another council at Clarendon, also 

marked by an important act of legislation, the Assize of 
Clarendon, by which the criminal law was reformed, 
and the grand jury system established or reformed in 
every shire. 

As soon as this was done he went to Normandy, in 
March, 1166, and stayed away until March, 
1 1 70. During this time little or nothing \°^i^ tQ 
but the ordinary business of justice and 
taxation is recorded in English .authorities. The Becket 
quarrel was the all-engrossing subject, the sole question 
of public interest. Abroad the view is only diversified 
by negotiation and border warfare with Lewis VII., and 
by the carrying out of Henry's plan for securing posses- 
sion of Brittany by the marriage of his third son, Geof- 
frey, with the heiress of the count. Having spent nearly 
four years in this way he returned, in order to look after 
business at home, and in particular to see his eldest son, 
who was fifteen, crowned as his associate and successor 
in the kingdom. The importance of the former acts 
comes into prominence in the later history of the reign. 
The coronation was the first of a series of events which 
sealed Becket's fate. It was solemnized on ^ . 

Coronation of 

the 14th of June, at Westminster. The Arch- the youpg 
bishop of York, Roger of Pont l'Eveque, 
an old rival of Thomas Becket, placed the crown 
on the boy's head, in contravention of the right of Can- 
terbury, and in the absence of the little Queen Margaret. 
Lewis was exasperated by this act of neglect or disre- 
spect shown to his daughter ; Becket was maddened by 



82 The Ea?'ly Plantagenets. a.d. 1170 

the contempt shown for his authority. The storm began 
to rage ; Lewis went to war ; Thomas, and the counts 
whom he made his friends, besieged the Pope with 
prayers, and at last he sent or promised to send a defi- 
nitive legation to place Henry's dominions under in- 
terdict, and compel him to recall the archbishop. 

Then Henry gave way. Crossing to Normandy a few 

days after the coronation, he met Becket at Freteval in 

.,. . July, and there consented to the return of 

Reconciliation J J 

of Henry and his great enemy. Three months, however, 

intervened before Becket started for home, 
and during that time he had several meetings with the 
king, in which he behaved, or his behaviour was inter- 
preted, in a way very prejudicial to his reputation for 

sincerity. At last he reached England, 
return* ? early in December, and as soon as he 

landed began to excommunicate the bishops 
who had crowned the boy Henry. At London and at 
Canterbury he was received with delight. Henry had 
become unpopular : the archbishop's popularity had 
been increased by his absence, and the multitude does 
occasionally sympathize with a man who has been op- 
pressed. The news of his rash, intemperate conduct 
reached Henry at court, at Bur, near Bayeux, where he 
had established himself after a very severe illness in the 
autumn. In high passion the king spoke words which 
he would have recalled at once, but which laid on him 

a life-long burden : " Would all his servants 
Henry's rash stand bv and see him thus defied by one 

words. J J 

whom he had himself raised from poverty 
to wealth and power ? Would no one rid him of the 
troublesome clerk ?" 

Armed by no public grievance, moved by no loyal 
zeal, but simply private enemies who saw their way to 



a.d. 1 1 70. Henry II and Thomas Becket. 83 

revenge and impunity, Reginald Fitz Urse, ■'. ., 

° r J ° Murder of 

Hugh de Morville, Richard Brito, and Wil- Becket, Dec. 
liam de Tracy, came to Canterbury, sought 29 ' II7 °" 
out the archbishop, and slew him. The cruelty on the 
one side, the heroism on the other — the savage barbarity 
of the desperate man, the strange passionate violence of 
the would-be martyr, finding at the last that he could 
not place a curb on his words or temper, even when he 
was, as he may be truly believed to have been, offering 
up his life for his Church— forms a sad but a thrice-told 
tale. 

Becket died on the 29th of December, 1170, and for 
350 years and more that day was kept in the Church of 
England as one of the chief festivals after Easter, Whit- 
suntide, and Christmas. It is no small proof of the 
strength of character which certainly marks Becket 
throughout his versatile career, that he should have 
made so deep an impression not only on England but 
on Christendom. Although some allowance must be 
made for the influence of superstition, and doubtless of 
imposture also, in the spread of the honor paid to him 
so widely, even such superstitions could not have ga- 
thered round one whose reputation was a mere figment 
of monks and legend-writers. He was undoubtedly 
recognized as the champion of a great cause which was 
then believed to need championship, and which through 
the greatness of the need served to excuse m , 

& . The true 

even such championship as it found in him. glory of 
But whatever were the cause which he was 
maintaining, he had some part of the glory that belongs 
to all who vindicate liberty, to all who uphold weakness 
against overwhelming strength. 

And in this view of him, in which Englishmen may 
have regarded him as the one man able and daring to 



84 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1170. 

beard the mighty king whom the memory of his fore- 
fathers had clothed with enhanced terrors, and whose 
designs for their good they were too ignorant to appre- 
ciate, Continental Christendom saw him the champion 
of the papacy as against the secular power. Later gen- 
erations under the recoil of the Reformation viewed him 
merely as a traitor, and his cultus as an organized im- 
posture. More calmly regarded — as now perhaps we 
may afford to regard him — he appears, as we have de- 
scribed him, a strong, impulsive man, the strength of 
whose will is out of all proportion to the depth of his 
character, with little self-restraint, little self-knowledge, 
no statesmanlike insight, and yet too much love of in- 
trigue and craft. He is not a constructive reformer in 
the Church ; in the state he is obstructive and exas- 
perating. Even on the estimate of his friends he does 
not come within the first rank of great men. The cause 
for which he fought was not the cause for which he fell, 
and the cause of liberty, which to some extent benefited 
by his struggle, was not the actual cause for which he 
was consciously fighting. He. appears small indeed by 
the side of Anselm, who knew well how to distinguish 
between the real and factitious importance of the claims 
which he made or resisted ; small indeed by the side of 
his successor, St. Edmund, who, brave as Thomas him- 
self was to declare the right, chose the part of the 
peace-maker rather than that of the combatant and 
recognized the glory of suffering patiently. Yet the 
world's gratitude has often been abundantly shown to 
men who deserved it less. 



ch. v. Henry II and his Sons. 85 



CHAPTER V. 

THE LATTER YEARS OF HENRY II. 

Continued reforms — Revolt of 1173-1 174— Renewed industry of 
Henry — His later years — Quarrel with Richard— Fall and death. 

It is one of the most distinct marks of Henry's mind, 
that whatever pressure his most engrossing employments 
put upon him, he never for a moment gave 

r * > ° Henry s perse- 

up the task of developing the great legal verance in re- 
reforms with which he began his reign. 
Even at the siege of Bridgenorth, in n 55, he had lent 
an ear to the suit of the monks of Battle ; in the very 
thick of the Becket struggle he was busily employed in 
reforming the criminal law and introducing or expand- 
ing the system of presentment by grand jury. The 
same purpose is constantly maintained, and every great 
and famous exploit of his adventurous life may be 
matched with some measure of practical reform, some 
step in the progress of a policy by which his people 
were to be made safer and his own power consequently 
to be made stronger. Throughout the whole reign there 
may be traced a constant and progressive policy of 
taking power out of the hands of the great 
vassals of the crown, of entrusting power to The political 
the great body of the freemen of the nation, 
and of consolidating the royal authority by employing 
the people in the maintenance of law. The blow struck 
at the military power of feudalism by the institution of 
scutage, the commutation of personal service in the 
field for a money payment, was one of the first of his 



86 The Early Plantagenets. ch. v. 

distinctive measures. The judicial power of the same 
body he limited, quite as much, by the mission of itiner- 
ant judges throughout the country to hear 
. I ^. e c r e ant the suits of the people and to punish crimi- 

nals. These visitations had been practised 
under Henry I.; they were restored by Henry II., at the 
beginning of the reign. These officers were employed 
not only for the trial of prisoners and determination of 
lawsuits, but for the assessment and collection of 
revenue. When the national council had decreed a tax, 
the itinerant judges, as Barons of the Exchequer, tra- 
velled through the land, fixing the payments to be made 
„. , , by the towns or by individuals. It was not 

fiscal work. J _ J t 

a very difficult business, for as all the reve- 
nue was raised from the land and the land remained 
divided in much the same proportions as it was in the 
Domesday Book, that famous record became, as it were, 
the rate-book of the country ; every land-owner could 
refer to it, to see what was the valuation of his property, 
and be taxed accordingly. Only the towns, therefore, 
which had grown in wealth and number since the time 
of the Conqueror's survey, would have occasion for de- 
bating with the judges how much they would have to 
pay. Almost every year of Henry's reign we find these 
officers making their circuits, which are the historical 

origin of the circuits of the Judges of Assize 
Circuits of m the present day. Sometimes, in the 

judges. L J ' 

earlier part of the reign, one or two go over 
the whole country ; sometimes six circuits are made, 
each managed by three judges ; sometimes four circuits 
of four, or two circuits of five or more. The chief 
epochs of this development are these: the year 1166, 
when the Assize of Clarendon was published ; the year 
1 176, when six circuits of three justices did the work 



ch._v. Henry II. and his Sons. 87 

under a revised form of the Assize of Clarendon, issued 
at Northampton; and the year 11 79, when Henry re- 
formed the central as well as the provincial tribunals. 

Of the effects of this system one, the abatement of 
the power of the feudal courts of justice by forcing them 
under royal jurisdiction, has been noticed Trainingofthe 
already. A second was the training of the people in self 

, . , r ■ • government. 

people generally, through the use of juries 
which were employed both for legal and fiscal business ; 
they thus learned to manage their own affairs and to 
keep up an intelligent interest in legislation and political 
business. A third was, to limit the power of the sheriffs,, 
who being the sole royal representatives in the shires, 
judicial, military, and fiscal, had great chances of ex- 
ercising irresponsible tyranny, of which the books of the 
time contain many complaints. Besides the visitations 
of the judges Henry from time to time used still stronger 
measures of remedy or precaution against the oppres- 
sions of the sheriffs. In 1170 he turned them all out of 
office, and held a very strict inquiry into the amount of 
money they had received, filling up their places with 
servants and officers of his own court, by whose action 
the local government would be placed in more direct 
relation to the central. 

Nor were these labors solely directed to the reform of 
provincial jurisdiction. Henry II. reformed also the 
supreme court of justice, which was sup- 
posed to emanate from his own person and SSture 
household, and established a distinct staff 
of well-instructed lawyers to hear the suits that were 
sent up for his royal decision. These men he found it 
hard work to manage, and once in 1178 he swept them 
all away as summarily as he had done the sheriffs in 
1 1 70. Sometimes he employed clerks, sometimes 



88 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. i i 70. 

knights, sometimes prelates, in the office of judge, with 
unequal success, but with a never-faltering purpose of 
securing easy justice. 

In the same way he varied the taxes, from year to 
year, not allowing the same interest to be oppressed 

with continual imposts, but taking now a 
taxation 1 " tallage from the towns, now a scutage or an 

aid from the land-owners or knightly body ; 
and on the occasion of the Crusade, in 11 84 and 1188, 
calling for a contribution from personal property, a fixed 
proportion or a tithe of goods for the war against 
Saladin. 

In order finally to secure the defence of the country, 
and to have a force on which he could depend for the 

maintenance of peace and order, he armed 
Military fa e w hole free population, or ordered them 

system. r r 

to provide arms, according to a fixed scale, 
proportioned to their substance. Thus he restored the 
ancient Anglo-Saxon militia system, and supplied the 
requisite counter-balance to the military power of the 
great feudatories, which, notwithstanding the temptation 
to avoid service by payment of scutage, they were still 
able and too willing to maintain. In all these measures 
we may trace one main object, the strengthening of the 
royal power, and one main means or directing principle, 
the doing so by increasing the safety and security of the 
people. Whatever was done to help the people served 
to reduce the power of the great feudal baronage ; to 
disarm their forces, to abolish their jurisdictions, to di- 
minish their chances of tyranny. Now all this could not 
but make Henry very much disliked by the great no- 
bles. The people of course were slow to see the benefit 
of the reforms, but the barons were quick enough at de- 
tecting the measures taken to humiliate and reduce 



chap. v. Htnry II and his Sons. 89 

them ; so, before Henry gained the affection of the peo- 
ple, he had to encounter the hostility of the barons. 

This hostility had been growing for a long time, 
awaiting the opportunity of breaking out into open re- 
volt. Such an opportunity the shock which Coronation 
followed the death of Becket gave it ; and of the heir, 
the very same measure taken by Henry, 
which in its results caused the death of Becket, gave a 
head and a direction, nominally at least, to the out- 
break. This measure was the coronation of the boy 
Henry in 11 70. The idea of having the heir-apparent 
crowned in his father's life-time was not familiar to the 
English or Normans ; the royal succession still retained 
so much of the elective character that it would perhaps 
have been regarded as an unconstitutional measure, 
thus violently and without option to determine the suc- 
cession irrevocably before the vacancy occurred. Much 
of the interest of the reigns of William Foreign 
Rufus and Henry I. turns upon this ques- custom of 

, „.;,,, designating 

tion. William the Conqueror and William tne succes- 
Rufus both left the succession undeter- « : ' 



crown. 



mined ; hence arose the rebellions of the 
reign of the Red King and the early struggles of Henry 
I. The measures by which he had done everything in 
his power to. secure and settle it had ended in the anar- 
chy under Stephen. But in France and Germany this 
experiment, now tried for securing the hereditary suc- 
cession, was familiar ; almost every one of the kings 
who followed Hugh Capet had had his son crowned in 
his life-time ; and in Germany since the very beginning 
of the Karolingian empire such cases had been fre- 
quent. Frederick Barbarossa at this very moment was 
working for the succession of his own son ; and the in- 
troduction of a second or inchoate partner in sovereign- 



90 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1170. 

ty, under the name of King of the Romans, became 
later on a part of the ordinary machinery of the empire. 
It is possible that Henry II. had this object solely and 
simply in view ; but another theory is conceivable. 

Henry well knew by what very discordant nationali- 
ties his states were peopled ; and he entertained the idea 
of dividing his dominions among his sons at 
poiitlcaf his death. To Richard, the second son, as 

object in his mother's heir, Aquitaine and Poictou 

were already given; for Geoffrey he had 
obtained the succession to the duchy of Brittany, and he 
was thinking of Ireland to be conquered for a kingdom 
for John. Henry, the eldest son, would of course have 
his father's inheritance, England, Normandy, and Anjou. 
Such a division the king actually made, when in the 
autumn of 1 170 he believed himself to be at the point of 
death ; and he brought up his sons among the people 
they were to rule, Henry among the Normans, Richard 
among the Poictevins. It would be still a question 
whether the elder brother should govern the family es- 
tates, as had been the case in the early Karolingian em- 
pire, his brethren owning his feudal superiority ; or 
whether each should possess his provinces in sove- 
reignty; subject only to the already existing feudal 
claims. 

However, when Henry began, as early as 1160, to 
broach the subject of his son's coronation he was only 
twenty-seven years old, and probably thought more of 
securing the allegiance and attachment of the English 
for the child, than of the chances which might follow his 
own death ; and later on we find him anxious to abridge 
the tedious parts of the royal duties to sharing them with 
the heir, although he never could part with one iota of 
the substance of power. Hence, then, the coronation of 



a. d. 1 1 70. Henry II. and his Sons. 91 

Henry the younger in 1170, the anger of Lewis VII. be- 
cause his daughter was not also crowned, and the 
quarrel among the bishops which caused Becket's death. 
Henry — for we must now return to the direct string of 
our story — was momentarily paralyzed at the news of the 
martyrdom. He saw how the blame was 
sure to fall upon him, and how all his ene- Henry 

r applies to 

mies would sooner or later take the oppor- the Pope on 
tunity to overwhelm him. Immediately, death, 
therefore, he sent envoys to Rome to pro- 
mise any terms whatever for acquittal or absolution. 
Whilst this negotiation was pending, knowing that the 
legates, for whom Lewis, before the death of Becket, 
had applied, were on their way to Normandy, and would 
not scruple to exert the utmost of their power against 
him, he organized an expedition to Ireland, 

' . ill • Expedition 

which for the last sixteen years had been his to Ireland, 
by papal grant, and for the last four had been 
undergoing the process of conquest in the hands of Rich- 
ard de Clare, surnamed Strongbow. In Ireland he stayed 
from the autumn of 117 1 to the Easter of 1172, receiving 
the submission of kings and bishops, and really keeping 
out of the way of the hostile legates : awaiting the arrival 
of the friendly legates who were coming to absolve him. 
Now, no doubt it appears strange that the Court of 
Rome should at this same moment be pouring out both 
sweet water and bitter ; that the supreme judge on earth 
should send forth a legation to put Henry's dominions 
under interdict for one act and directly after send another 
to absolve him for what seems a more hei- ~ L 

Character of 

nous one. It must, however, be remembered the Court of 
that in this the papal court was rather acting 
as a great tribunal of international arbitration than as the 
council of a Christian bishop. The Court of Rome was 



92 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1172. 

a great legal machine, the disadvantages of which are 
manifest at first sight, but the benefit of which in a war- 
like age can scarcely be overrated, although less obvious 
at a glance. A very severe judgment may perhaps be 
allowable, as to the assumptions and arrogance and 
unrighteousness of the papacy in taking the office of 
international arbitration ; but judged by its results it was 
for the time a great public benefit, for it stopped and 
hindered the constant appeals to war. Thus viewed the 
Court of Rome was as open for suitors as any simple 
court of justice : an applicant who wanted legal redress 
applied for a commission of inquiry or a legation. In 
so doing he brought the usual means to tear on the 
papal officials, who no doubt found it to their interest 
to keep their minds always open to hear both sides, and 
to keep their purses also open to receive the contribu- 
tions of all sides in each suit, and thus maintain the 
wealth and power of the court itself. It is not to be 
denied that, however arrived at, the decisions ultimately 
given were in most cases fair and just. 

Henry, then, on this occasion eluded one legation and 

welcomed another. In 1 172 he met the friendly cardinals 

at Avranches, took all the oaths they pro- 

penltence posed, renounced the Constitutions of Cla- 

a.nd absolu ~ rendon, purged himself of the guilt of Beck- 

tion, 1172. > f is t> 

et's death, declared his adherence to Alexan- 
der III., as Catholic Pope, in refutation of the statement 
that he had acknowledged the anti-Pope, and received 
full absolution. He then, by way of general pacification, 
Second na( ^ n * s son re-crowned and his wife crowned 

coronation w i t h fam and went down to the South of 

of the heir. . • i i 

France to make a lasting peace with the 
Count of Toulouse, and to bargain for the marriage of John 
with the heiress of the county of Maurienne and Savoy. 



A. d. 1 1 73. Henry II. and his Sons. 93 

The storm seemed to have blown over ; unfortunately 
the lull preceded the great outbreak. Strange to say, the 
immediate occasion for the strife was the little Quarrel of 
boy John, the five-year-old bridegroom. All HenT-s 
his great enemies Henry had silenced ; 
Lewis had got his daughter crowned, the Pope was paci- 
fied, the barons were secured by the strength of the 
home government, the Scots were humble and obliging, 
all the sons were friends. The little child who in the end 
broke his heart was already a stumbling-block. The 
Count of Maurienne naturally asked what provision was 
to be made by Henry for his son's marriage. Henry 
found himself obliged to ask his elder sons to give up 
for their brother some few castles out of their promised 
shares of his dominions. The eldest son refused; he 
would give up nothing ; he had got nothing by being 
crowned, he was not trusted to go about alone ; let the 
king give him some real power, England or Normandy, 
then he might have something that he could give up. 
The ill-conditioned lad nursed his grievance, and, early 
in the spring of 1 173, fled from his father's court and 
threw himself into the arms of Lewis. Queen Eleanor 
too, whose influence with her husband was lessened by 
her misguidance of her children, and by the evil habits 
which Henry himself had contracted during the Becket 
quarrel, used all her influence to increase the breach in 
her family. She intrigued with her first husband against 
her second, and brought even Richard into the list of 
his father's enemies. 

Thus, then, early in 1173 a head was provided for a 
great confederation of French lords and English barons, 
actively aided by Lewis of France, Philip of 
Flanders, the Counts of Champagne and the !J a ?n St league 
King of Scots, William the Lion, who had Henr y> "73. 



94 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1173. 

succeeded Malcolm IV. in 1165. The younger Henry, 
liberal in promises, proposed to reward with vast Eng- 
lish estates the men who were to help in renewing the 
glories of the Conquest. And the great English earls, 
Chester, Leicester, and Norfolk, were bent on reviving 
the feudal influence which Henry's reforms had so 
weakened. These earls were mighty men on both sides 
of the Channel : the Norman quarrel could be fought 
in England as well as in Normandy, Anjou, and Poic- 
tou. Measures were contrived at Paris for a univer- 
sal rising. And the success of the design seemed at 
first almost certain. Henry had a large force of Bra- 
bangon mercenaries about him, but scarcely any other 
force on which he could depend at all. 

The war began by a Flemish invasion of Normandy ; 

then the Earl of Chester raised Brittany against the 

king ; then the Poictevins rose in arms. 

ar egins. jr rom France the torch was handed to Eng- 
land. William the Lion, with a half-barbarian army, 
began a devastating march southward ; the Earl of Lei- 
cester landed a great force of Flemings in Norfolk ; the 
Earl Ferrers of Derby fortified his castles in the midland 
counties ; old Hugh Bigot of Norfolk, who had sworn 
the disinheritance of Matilda in 1135, garrisoned his 
castles — all England was in an uproar. The old justi- 
ciar, the king's lieutenant, Richard de Lucy, was be- 
wildered; and the great Bishop of Durham, Hugh de 
Puiset, King Stephen's nephew, began to play a dou- 
ble game, negotiating with the Scots, and allowing the 
landing of Flemish mercenaries, to be used at discretion. 

Two influences, however, turned the scale against this 
overwhelming preponderance of treachery and force — 
H , Henry's wonderful energy, which his con- 

success, temporaries called supernatural good luck, 



a. d. 1 1 73. Henry II. and his Son. 95 

and the faithfulness of the English people, who, now, 
when the crucial test was applied to them, amply re- 
paid the many years of culture spent upon them. 
Henry had been taken by surprise by the general onset ; 
and, unwilling to believe in the ingratitude of his boys, 
he at first was slow to move against them ; but he showed 
extraordinary promptness when he saw the state of af- 
fairs and had made up his mind how to act. Having 
put Lewis VII. to ignominous flight at Conches, he 
rushed down upon Dol, in Brittany, where he captured 
the Earl of Chester and the chief Breton 
and Angevin rebels ; and during the autumn 
of 1 173, before the worst news from England arrived, 
he had captured one after the other the nests of rebellion 
in Maine. At Christmas he concluded a three months' 
truce with Lewis and undertook the pacification of 
Poictou, which employed him until the next summer, 
fretting and chafing against the detention which kept 
iiim away from England. 

In England matters had gone on more slowly, owing 
to the unprepared state of the ministry and the general 
feeling of apprehension and mistrust. There, 
however, Henry had some men on whom War ! ^, 

he could depend : Richard de Lucy, the jus- 
ticiar ; Ranulf Glanvill, the great lawyer, who was rising 
into the first rank as a minister ; Reginald, Earl of Corn- 
wall, the king's uncle; the Earl of Arundel, husband of 
Queen Adeliza, widow of Henry I., and others connected 
with the royal house. These men had insufficient forces 
at their disposal, and were at first unable to decide 
whether the Scots in the North, or the Earl of Leicester 
in the East, or the midland revolt under Earl Ferrers, 
was the most formidable. At last, having made up their 
minds to make a truce with the Scots, they moved upon 



96 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. i i 74. 

Norfolk, and defeated the earls in October, at Fornham 
St. Genevieve. There they took prisoners the Earl oi 
Leicester and his wife, the great Lady Petronilla, whoce 
comprehensive soul embodied all the spite and arro- 
gance and vindictiveness of the oligarchy of the Con- 
quest. She, as heiress of Grantmesnil, had brought a 
great inheritance to her husband, the degenerate heir 
of the faithful Beaumonts; for the Leicester Beaumonts 
were the only house which since the Conquest had been 
uniformly faithful to the Conqueror and his heirs. This 
great success enabled Henry to remain in Poictou during 
the winter and spring of 11 74, and allowed the ministers 
to concentrate their forces against the Scots. The peo- 
ple rose against the feudal party, and a brisk struggle 
was kept up in the interior of the country until the sum- 
mer. William the Lion spent his time in se- 

Capture of # x 

William the curing the border castles, seeking his own 
ends, instead of pressing southwards, and so 
doing his part to overturn Henry's throne. At last early 
in July, 1 1 74, he was surprised and taken prisoner at Aln- 
wick, by the host of Yorkshire men and the loyal barons. 
Just at the same moment Henry had crossed from 
Normandy with his Brabangons, and made a pilgrimage 
to Becket's grave. His triumph was now regarded as a 
token of Divine forgiveness. He marched 
arrival in at onc e into Norfolk, where he received the 

England, submission of the Bigots and the Mowbrays, 

the latter of whom had been overcome by 
the king's natural son, Geoffrey, now bishop elect of 
Lincoln, and afterwards so well known as Archbishop 
of York. All his foes were now at his feet ; the King 
of Scots and the two great earls were prisoners ; the rest 
entirely humiliated. In less than a month from his 
landing he was able to go back to Normandy. 



a. d. 1 1 75. Henry II. and his Sons. 97 

The French war came to an end on the collapse or 
the English rebellion, and in the month of End of the 
September all Henry^s dominions were at war 
rest, his children reconciled, even the King of France 
admitted to peace. 

And now we have true evidence of Henry's real 
greatness in policy and spirit, notwithstanding his pro- 
vocations and the changed strain of his character and 
temper. He shed no blood, he took no ransoms, he 
condemned to destitution not one of the leaders of the 
rebellion ; he laid his hands for a few years on their 
estates, but even these were shortly restored, and no 
man was disinherited by way of punishment. But he 
pulled down their castles. The nests of feudal tyranny 
and insubordination he not merely dismantled, but in 
some cases destroyed so utterly as to leave not one 
stone upon another, that they might be no more the 
beginning of the temptation to such a design. Against 
the Scots his hand was very heavy ; he insisted on abject 
submission. Before he would release the king from his 
captivity he insisted that he should do Submission 
homage, acknowledging the supremacy of of Scotland, 
his crown over the Scottish crown, and of 
the English Church over the Scottish. The Scottish 
barons must become his men ; the Scottish bishops must 
declare their obedient subjection to the English Church; 
and the castles of the Lowlands must be retained in the 
hands of men whom he should place there with English 
garrisons. This humiliating negotiation, concluded at 
Falaise before William's liberation, was confirmed at 
York in the following August. From this time, until 
Richard I. sold back to William the Lion the rights that 
he had lost, Scotland was subject to the English king as 
overlord, and her king as king was our king's vassal. 



gS The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1175. 

The Church, however, escaped subjection, because the 
archbishops of Canterbury and York could not agree 
which should rule her, and before their quarrel was 
ended the Pope stepped in and declared the Scottish 
Church the immediate care and peculiar daughter of the 
Roman see. Besides this, the half-independent prince 
of Galloway was compelled to acknowledge himself a 
vassal of both the kings. 

So completely was the authority of Henry II., re- 
established by the peace of 11 74, that we are almost 
tempted to underrate the importance of the 
Importance of elements that had been arrayed against 

this struggle. , . \ 

him. It was not, however, in the want 01 
strength and spirit that the confederation against him 
failed ; the kings of France and Scotland, the counts of 
Champagne, Boulogne, and Flanders, the earls of 
Chester, Leicester, Norfolk, and Derby, his own sons 
and his own wife, were united in their hostility. The 
religious feeling of the nation, which since the death of 
Becket had to a remarkable degree realized or rather 
exaggerated his merits as a statesman and a churchman, 
was used as a weapon against him. Every interest that 
he had injured, or that had suffered in the process of 
his reforms, was made to take its part. Yet all failed. 
They failed partly, no doubt, because they had really no 
common cry, no common cause. They had many grie- 
vances and a good opportunity ; but all their several 
aims were selfish ; their plan, so far as they had one, 
destructive not constructive ; their leaders unwilling to 
sacrifice or risk anything of their own, greedy to grasp 
what belonged of right to the king, the nation, or even 
to their own fellows. They fought one by one against a 
prompt, clear-headed, accomplished warrior, and they 
were beaten one by one ; not, however, without a very 



A. d. 1 1 76. Henry II and his Sons. 99 

considerable intermingling of what is ordinarily called 
good fortune on the king's side. Thus Henry in the 
twentieth year of his reign was more powerful by far 
than when, at the beginning of it, the desire and dar- 
ling of the whole people, he brought back peace and 
light and liberty after the evil days. 

The general line of policy which Henry had hitherto 
pursued he took up almost at the identical point at which 
it had been interrupted by the rebellion ; Henry re _ 
but instead of seeking for John a provision sumeshis 

. schemes 

on the Continent, he determined to find him 
a wife and an endowment in England, and, when he 
should be old enough, to make him king of Ireland. 
With this idea he arranged for him, in 1176, 
a marriage with Hawisia, the daughter of ^tTjohn. 
William, Earl of Gloucester, his cousin ; and 
-the next year, in a great assembly at Oxford, he divided 
the still unconquered provinces of Ireland into great 
fiefs, the receivers of which took the oath of fealty, not 
only to himself, but to John as their future king. The 
Pope also was canvassed as to the erection of Ireland 
into a kingdom and the coronation of John. The same 
year Johanna, the king's youngest daughter, Marriages of 
was married with very great pomp to the the king's 

, V- i -l • daughters. 

young king William the Good, as he is 
called, of Sicily, a prince who had an unbounded ad- 
miration for his father-in-law, and would have settled 
the reversion of his kingdoms upon him if Henry had 
accepted the offer. Eleanor, the second daughter, was 
already married to Alfonso, King of Castile, who in 
1 177 .referred to the judgment of Henry a great lawsuit 
between himself and his kinsman the King of Navarre. 
This arbitration not only illustrates the estimation in 
which Henry after his great victory was held on the 



ioo The Early Plantagc nets, a. d. 1178. 

Continent, but shows us also how he deliberated with his 
councillors. He held a very great court of bishops and 
superior clergy, of barons and other tenants-in-chief, on 
the occasion ; the arguments of the parties were laid 
before them, and, in conformity with their advice asked 
and given, the judgment was delivered. 

The two or three years that followed the rebellion were 

the period of Henry's longest stay in England. He 

came in April 1175, and stayed until August 

England ll 77 i a f ter a Y ear spent in Normandy and 

Anjou he returned in 1178, and stayed until 
the end of June 1180; after which, although he paid 
several long visits to England, his absences were much 
longer. These years were periods of great activity in 
political matters. The number of councils that he heid, 
the variety of public business that he despatched in 
them, the series of changes intended to promote the 
speedy attainment of justice, the unfailing purpose 
which he showed of fulfilling the pledge which in his 
early days he had given to his people, all these come 
out in the simple details of the historian with remarka- 
ble fulness. Henry was not at this time, or ever after, 
a happy man ; his son Henry, nominally reconciled, 
T . „ was constantly intriguing against him with 

Intrigues of . . 000 

the younger his father-in-law, Lewis, and the discon- 
tented lords of the foreign dominion. He 
took up the part of an advocate of local rights and 
privileges, and headed confederations against his father, 
and against his brother Richard as the oppressor of the 
barons of Poictou. He complained that his father 
treated him meanly, not giving enough money, and jea- 
lously refusing him his share of power. The father 
treated him generously and patiently, but he could not 
trust him, and did not pretend to do so. 



A. D. 1 1 78. Henry II. and his Sons. 101 

Queen Eleanor, too, was now imprisoned, or seques- 
tered from her husband in honorable captivity. This 
great lady, who deserves to be treated with 
more honor and respect than she has gene- §" een r 
rally met with, had behaved very ill to her 
husband in the matter of the rebellion ; and, although 
he occasionally indulged her with the show of royal 
pomp and power, he never released her from confine- 
ment or forgave her. She was a very able woman, of 
great tact and experience, and still greater ambition ; a 
most important adviser whilst she continued to support 
her husband, a most dangerous enemy when in opposi- 
tion. Her political intrigues in the East, when she ac- 
companied her first husband on the Crusade, had made 
him contemptible, and that Lewis never forgave her. 
But her second husband was made of sterner stuff. He 
took and kept the upper hand ; it was only after his 
death that Eleanor's real powers found room for play ; 
and had it not been for her governing skill while Rich- 
ard was in Palestine, and her influence on the Continent 
during the early years of John, England would have 
been a prey to anarchy, and Normandy lost to the house 
of Anjou long before it was. 

The quarrel with his wife and the mistrust of his chil- 
dren threw the king under very evil influences, although 
as a king he tried hard to do his duty ; and they sowed 
the seed of later difficulties which at last overwhelmed 
him. The internal history of these years is occupied 
with the judicial and financial doings which have been 
sketched Tin the early pages of this chapter ; outside 
there was peace, except in Poictou, where Richard was 
learning the art of war, winning his first laurels and 
making his worst and most obstinate enemies. 

In 1 180 the long strife and jealousy between Henry 



102 The Early Plantagcnets. a. d.ii 83 

II., and Lewis VII., came to an end. The weak and 
unprincipled King of France, after resign- 

A_cccssion 01 

Philip II., ing his crown to his son Philip, a boy of 
sixteen, retired into a convent and died. 
Philip inherited all his hatred of Henry, although he 
was better able to appreciate his wisdom, and showed in 
his early years a desire to have him as a political ad- 
viser and instructor. He inherited, too, all his father's 
falseness, craft, and dishonesty, but not his morbid con- 
science nor his irresoluteness. Without being so great 
a coward as his father, Philip was yet a long way from 
being a brave man, and loses much by his juxtaposition 
with Richard and even with John in that respect. But 
he was very unscrupulous, very pertinacious, and in re- 
sult very successful, outliving all his rivals, and leaving 
his kingdom immensely stronger than it was when he 
succeeded to it. In the domestic quarrels of his early 
years, with his stepmother and the counts of Cham- 
pagne, he availed himself of the advice of Henry, which 
was given honestly and effectually ; but, after Henry's 
quarrels with his sons began again, Philip saw his -way 
clearly enough to the humiliation of the rival house ; 
and he took too sure and too fatal advantage of his op- 
portunity. 

There is no need to dwell on the events of 1181 and 
1 182 ; the chief mark of the former year is that assize of 
arms which has been already mentioned. In 1182 the 
king was a good deal in Poictou. England was governed 
now, and chiefly for the rest of the reign, by Ranulf 
Glanvill, the chief justiciar, who in 1180 or 1179 had 
succeeded to Richard de Lucy. The country was quiet ; 
so quiet, that when the troubles began on the Continent 
not a hand or foot in England stirred against the king. 
English history during these and the following years is a 



a.d. 1 183. Henry II. and his Sons. 103 

simple record of steady growth ; all interest, personal and 
political, centres in the king. 

The year 1183 begins with a new phase. The young 
king had of late shown himself somewhat more dutiful. 
His father was now in his fiftieth year, and Second 
that was for the kings of those days a some- revolt of the 

,—,,-. j young king. 

what advanced maturity. The heir seemed 
to have learned that he might, as he must, bide his time. 
The arrangement which was to provide for the continued 
cohesion of the family estates was as yet uncompleted. 
Henry urged that the younger brothers should all do 
homage and swear fealty to the elder. Richard was 
with some difficulty prevailed on to do this ; but almost 
as soon as it was done Henry took advantage of the dis- 
content of the Poictevins, quarrelled with Richard about 
the custody of a petty castle, and headed a war party 
against him. Their father, who at first perhaps had in- 
tended that Henry should be allowed to enforce his supe- 
riority, soon saw that it was his bounden duty to maintain 
the cause of Richard. Geoffrey of Brittany joined his 
eldest brother. Whilst Richard and his father besieged 
Limoges, Henry and Geoffrey allowed their archers to 
shoot at their father; they ill-treated his messengers, 
drove him to desperation, and became desperate them- 
selves. The younger Henry, after feigning reconcilia- 
tion, and more than once cruelly and hypocritically 
deserting his father, tried to recruit his resources by 
plundering the rich shrines of the Aquitanian saints. 
The age saw in his fate speedy vengeance for his impiety, 
his own evil conscience found perhaps in his behaviour 
to his father a still greater burden. Before Limoges was 
taken, the wretched man — for at eight-and- 
twenty he was a boy no more — sickened and ^ 8 S death > 
died at Martel, and left no issue. He passed 



104 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1185. 

away like foam on the water, no man regretting him ; 
lamented only as his father's enemy, and by that father 
who, with all his faults and his mismanagement, loved 
his sons far more than they deserved. 

The death of the heir threw upon Richard the right, 
so far as it could be regarded as a right, of succession ; 

it reopened also the question about the por- 
Distrust of t j on f Q ueen Margaret, the castles of the 

Vexin which Henry had so craftily got into 
his hands in consequence of the marriage. These castles 
he refused to restore to the king of France. Richard's 
claim to the fealty of the barons he could not allow to be 
recognised, lest Richard should attempt to play against 
him the part which his elder brother had played. He 
wished also that the Aquitanian heritage should be made 

over to John, especially after the death of 
Death of Geoffrey of Brittany, which occurred in 1 186, 

no right of succession being allowed to the 
baby Arthur, born after his father's death. Hence there 
were constant feuds and difficulties, mainly, however, 
on the French side of the Channel, Philip fomenting the 
family discord. 

The threatening condition of Palestine long averted 
open war. Henry was the head of the house of Anjou, 
The house of fr° m which the Frank kings of Jerusalem, 
TenSalem descended from Fulk, his grandfather, drew 

their origin. Baldwin the Leper, the son 
of King Amalric, the conqueror of Egyptian Babylon, 
was waging a very unequal fight against Saladin, Sultan 
of Egypt and Syria. It was a brilliant struggle, but 
against fearful odds. A prey to a sickness which physi- 
cally disabled him, weakened by the divisions of a court 
speculating already on his death and the break-up of the 
kingdom ; at the head of an aristocratic body which had 



a. d. 1 187. Henry II. and his Sons. • 105 

in a single century learned all the vices and none of the 
virtues of the East; with the knightly orders quarrel- 
ling with one another ; with the barons of the kingdom 
playing the part of traitors, the princes of the confedera- 
tion leaguing with Saladin, and the ablest of his allies 
utterly unfettered by the sense of honor ; — Baldwin in 
despair sent the keys of the Holy Sepulchre to Henry 
of England, as his kinsman, and prayed him to come to 
the rescue. Then he died and left the kingdom first to 
his baby nephew, then to his syster Sibylla and Guy of 
Lusignan her husband. The mission of the patriarch 
Heraclius, in 1185, was received with little enthusiasm in 
the West. Some two or three great English barons, 
Hugh of Beauchamp and Roger Mowbray, went ; but 
the English Church and baronage, assembled at the 
Council of Clerkenwell, told the king that it was his first 
duty to stay at home and keep the promises made in his 
coronation oath. He himself could do no 

.1 rr l. -i- • Jerusalem 

more than offer contributions in money. taken. 
The patriarch went off in disgust ; and be- 
fore anything was really done Saladin had captured the 
king, the True Cross, and the holy city. 

This news, which reached England in October or No- 
vember, 1 187, silenced for a moment the petty quarrels 
of the West. But it was for a moment only. At the 
first shock of the tidings Henry and Philip laid aside 
their grievances. Richard was the first to take the cross. 
The popes one after another in quick suc- 
cession issued impassioned adjurations that Crusade^ 
peace should be made, and that one great 
Catholic Crusade should rescue imperilled Christendom. 
The Emperor himself, the lord of the Western world, 
the great Frederick, declared that he would go to Pales- 
tine with all the German chivalry. In England and 

H 



io6 The Early Plantage nets, a.d. 1189. 

France went out a decree that all men who had any- 
thing should pay a tenth towards the Crusade. The 
Saladin tithe was enacted by a great assembly of all 
England, at Geddington, near Northampton, and it was 
the first case in which Englishmen ever paid a general 
tax on all their goods and chattels. This was done in 
February, 11 88. The money was hastily collected. It 
was yet uncertain whether the king would go himself or 
send Richard or John or both. But the moment of peace 
was over, and for Henry at least the end was coming. 
The last storm arose in the South ; the quarrel be- 
tween Richard and the Count of Toulouse, 

Henry s last . . 

quarrel; beginning about a little matter, drew in both 

Henry and Philip. Philip complained to 
Henry of the misrule of his son. Henry disowned the 
measures of Richard ; and Philip invaded Berry. At 
first Richard acted in concert with his father, drove 
Philip out of Berry, and recovered the places that he 
had taken. Henry was in England at the time of the 
outbreak. He sent over first the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, then John, and at last, in July, 1188, left his king- 
dom never to return. The name of the great king was, 
at first, potent enough. Philip sued for peace; the 
Counts of Champagne insisted that there should be 
peace until the Crusade was over. Once and again the 
two kings met, and failed to come to a reconciliation. 
In November Richard began to waver : he did homage 
to Philip for all the French provinces, saving, 
joins^Philip. however, his fealty to his father. A truce 
was made, and the Pope sent a legate to turn 
the truce into a peace. But when the time of truce ex- 
pired Richard had gone over to Philip, and actually 
joined in the invasion of his father's territories. Philip 
insisted that Richard should be acknowledged heir ; 



A. d. 1 1 88. Henry II. and his Sons. 107 

Henry hesitated ; Richard suspected that John was to sup- 
plant him : John was bribed to take part with his father's 
enemies. Henry, unable to believe the monstrous con- 
spiracy, for the first time in his life showed want of resolu- 
tion ; he did not draw his forces to a head, but deliberated 
ard negotiated whilst Richard and Philip were acting. 
His health was failing, and his spirits had failed already. 
So the spring of 1189 went on, Henry staying mostly 
at Saumur, in Anjou, or at Chinon ; and Philip watching 
for his opportunity. At length on May 28, after a con- 
ference at la Fert6 Bernard, in which Henry, as it was 
said, bribed the papal legate to take his side, Philip 
finally broke into war ; carried almost by surprise the 
chief castles of Maine, and with a good 
fortune which he could scarcely realize i e a Mans.° 
captured the city of le Mans itself, which 
Henry, although at the head of a stout force of knights, 
refused to defend. Wretchedly ill and broken in spirit, 
he rode for his life from le Mans, to escape from the 
hands of his son and of Philip. This was on June 12. 
Le Mans was Henry's birth-place ; there his father was 
buried, and he had loved the place very much ; it was 
also a very strong place, and when it was taken he 
knew that sooner or later Tours must go too. But even 
before Tours was taken all was lost, for Henry seemed 
to think that he had nothing left to live or fight for. 
Scarcely able to sit on horseback, he rode 
all day from le Mans, and rested at night fli |£ r t y s 

at la Frenaye, on the way to Normandy, 
where the chief part of his force and all his strength lay. 
Geoffrey, his natural son and chancellor, afterwards 
Archbishop of York, was with him, and the poor father 
clung to him in his despair. To him, through his friend 
Giraldus Cambrensis, we owe the story of these sad days. 



to8 Tlie Early Plantagenets. a.d.ii 88. 

Henry was worn out with illness and fatigue — he 
would, he said, lie down and die : at night he would not 
be undressed ; Geoffrey threw his cloak on 
days. aSt hi m an d watched by his side. In the morn- 

ing the king declared that he could not 
leave Anjou ; Geoffrey was to go on to Alengon with the 
troops. He would return to Chinon. Geoffrey was not 
allowed to depart until the Steward of Normandy had 
sworn that, should the king die, he would surrender the 
castles only to John ; for Henry did not yet know the 
treachery of his favorite child. All was done as he 
bade ; Geoffrey secured Alengon and then returned to 
look for his father ; he found him at a place called Sa- 
vigny, and took him to Chinon, as he wished. For a 
fortnight Philip pursued his conquests unimpeded. 
Henry moved again to Saumur, and was there visited 
by the Counts of Champagne ; but he had neither en- 
ergy, nor apparently even the will, to strike a blow or to 
come to a decision that would ensure peace. A confer 
ence was fixed for June 30, at Azai, but when the day 
came Henry was too ill to attend ; and Philip and Rich- 
ard went off loudly exclaiming that it was a false ex- 
cuse. The same day Philip came to Tours. Again the 
princes interfere ; but Philip would not listen. On July 
3, he took the city. Then Henry, dying as he was, 
made his last effort ; he was carried from Saumur to 
Azai, mounted there on horseback, and met his two foes 
on the plain of Colombieres. 

There, after two attempts to converse, broken by a 
terrible thunder-storm, Henry, held up on horseback by 
his servants, accepted Philip's terms and submitted, 
surrendering all that he was asked to surrender. One 
thing he asked for, the list of the conspirators, to whom 
he was obliged to promise forgiveness. The list was given 



A. D. 1 189. Henry II. and his Sons. 109 

him ; and with reluctance and muttered reproaches, per- 
haps curses also, he gave Richard the kiss of peace. 
He went back to Azai, still transacting some little busi- 
ness on the way, for the monks of Canterbury, who had 
quarrelled with their archbishop, forced themselves into 
his presence and provoked some sharp words of reproof 
even then. Then he opened the list of rebels, and the 
first name that he saw was John's. And that broke his 
heart ; he turned his face to the wall and said, " I have 
nothing left to care for ; let all things go their way." 

From that blow he never rallied. He was carried on a 
litter to Chinon, chafing against the shame of defeat and 
the mortification of his love. Geoffrey sat by him fan- 
ning him in the sultry air and driving away the flies 
that teased him. To him Henry confided his last wishes. 
He told him he was to be Archbishop of York, and gave 
him his ring, with the seal of the panther, to give to the 
King of Castile ; then he ordered them to take him up, 
on his bed, and lay him before the altar of 
the castle chapel ; there he received the Hem- h n 
last sacraments and died, two days after the 
meeting at Colombieres. 

There is hardly in all English history a more striking 
catastrophe or a scene in itself more simply touching. 
So much suffering, so great a fall, from such grandeur to 
such humiliation, such bitter sorrow, the loss of every- 
thing worth having, power and peace and his children's 
love may have stirred in him in that last moment the 
thought of forgiveness. But Richard saw him alive no 
more ; and when at the funeral, at Font Evraud, he met 
the bier on which his father's body lay, blood flowed 
forthwith from the nostrils of the dead king, as if his 
spirit were indignant at his coming. 



no The Early Plantageneis. a.d. 1189. 



CHAPTER VI. 

RICHARD CCEUR DE LION. 

Character of the reign — Richard's first visit to England — His cha- 
racter — The Crusade — Fall of Longchamp — Richard's second 
visit — His struggle with Philip — His death. 

The historical interest of the reign of Richard I. is of 
two sorts : there is abundance of personal adventure 
and incident, and there is a certain quantity of legal and 
constitutional material which it is easier to interweave 
into a general disquisition on such subjects than to 
invest with a unity and plot of its own. But there is 
no great national change, no very pronounced develop- 
ment, no crisis of stirring interest or great permanent im- 
port. The strong system of government introduced by 
Henry II. was gaining still greater strength and consis- 
tency; the royal power, which it was the first object of 
that system to consolidate, was growing stronger and 
stronger, and the nation in general, whilst it was passing 
through that phase in which a strong government is a 
necessary guide and discipline, was benefiting by the 
policy which must sooner or later educate it to remedy 
the abuses and perhaps to overthrow the strong govern- 
ment itself. But as yet the royal power was wielded by 
men who used it like statesmen, and the strength of the 
nation was not tempted to assert itself by a premature 
struggle. One great personal struggle there was during 
the reign, and a somewhat interesting one in point of 
detail, but it is one which typified and prefigured rather 
than formed a link in the chain of causes that brought 
about the struggle of Runnymede. 



A. d. 1 189. Richard Cceur de Lion. in 

The great subjects of romantic interest are Richard's 
crusade, captivity and death. England had little to do 
with these, except as being the source for the supply of 
treasure ; she scarcely saw Richard ; to her the king was 
little more than a political expression which furnished 
arguments to a series of powerful administrators, Wil- 
liam Longchamp, Walter of Coutances, Hubert Walter 
and Geoffrey Fitz Peter. But as connecting English with 
Continental history the personal career of Richard has 
its own interest and value, and, even in a rapid survey 
like the present, it demands, if not the first place, cer- 
tainly one which is second to no other. 

Richard, as we have seen, was not acknowledged by 
his father as his heir, nor had he received the homage 
of the barons as presumptive successor, un- 
til he had wrung the concession from the Richard's 

succession. 

dying Henry on the field of Colombieres. 
The fact that, without a word of opposition, he was re- 
ceived as Duke of Normandy, Count of Anjou, and 
King of the English, immediately on the news of his 
father's death, proves that the doctrine of hereditary 
succession was, in practice if not in theory, already ad- 
mitted as the lawful one, and that Henry's reforms had 
left the countries subject to his immediate sway in such 
order that no one even ventured to take advantage of 
the interregnum to disturb the peace. It also proves that 
Richard had strong friends. Among these the first was 
his mother, who, rejoicing in her deliverance by Henry's 
death from her long captivity, placed her- 
self at the head of the English government, Eleanor 
and, empowered by Richard, ruled as 
regent until his arrival. One reason for this probably 
was that Ranulf Glanvill, the justiciar, had been a con- 
fidential friend of Henry, and may have been suspected 



ii2 The Ea?-ly Plantagenets. a.d. 1189. 

of promoting the design of placing John upon the 
throne. For more than a month Eleanor reigned, Rich- 
ard spending the time in making terms with Philip, who 
had become his enemy as soon as he succeeded to his 
father's place, and in receiving the formal investiture of 
the several dignities which he claimed on the Continent. 
In the middle of August he came to England, and 
John with him. After a magnificent progress of little 

more than a fortnight, he was crowned with 
C f°R" h i0 d exceeding great pomp at Westminster, on 

the 3rd of September. This is the first cor- 
onation the state ceremonies of which have been exactly 
recorded, and it has remained a precedent for all subse- 
quent occasions ; the religious services of course are 
much older. It was unfortunately disgraced by a riot 

promoted by Richard's foreign attendants 
Persecution against the Jews, who, notwithstanding the 

king's exertions, were severely handled, 
robbed and murdered, the example being followed, as 
soon as his personal protection was removed, at York, 
Stamford and St. Edmund's. 

Richard at the time of his coronation was thirty-two 
years old ; a man of tall stature, like his father and elder 
brother, ruddy and brown-haired, and giving already 
some indications of corpulence, which he tried to keep 
down by constant exercise. In dress he was very 
splendid and ostentatious, therein unlike his father. The 
dissimilarity in character was greater. Richard was 
foolishly extravagant, as lavish of money as Henry was 

sparing, and as unscrupulous in his ways of 
R^fhard er of exacting it as his father was cautious and 

considerate. At this period of his life he 
had no pronounced political views ; he had taken the 
Cross, and was that very rare phenomenon, an ardent 



A. D. 1 189. Richard Coeur de Lion. 113 

Crusader, but he had not yet conceived a political 
scheme as King of England or as enemy of the King of 
France. He had not thought of taking into his hands 
the strings of that foreign policy for which Henry had 
sacrificed so much. He despised his friend Philip far 
more than his knowledge of him or the results of their 
intercourse justified him in doing; he trusted in himself 
far more than any man should do who has any sense of 
the rights or duties of kingship. He was a thorough 
warrior ; personally brave, fearless in danger, politic and 
cautious in planning, and rapid in executing, exhibiting 
in battle the very faculties which deserted him in coun- 
cil—circumspection, self-control, readiness. He cared 
more for the glory of victory than either for the fame or 
the substance of it ; it was his very joy to excel in arms, 
rather than to win renown or profit ; yet for both renown 
and profit he had an insatiable thirst also. He was elo- 
quent, generous and impulsive. In religion he was per- 
haps more sincere than his family generally were ; he 
heard mass daily, and on three occasions did penance 
in a very remarkable way, simply on the impulse of his 
own distressed conscience. He did not show the care- 
lessness in divine things that marked the house of 
Anjou, still less the brutal profanity of John. But not- 
withstanding this he was a vicious man, a bad husband 
and a bad son ; vicious, although his vices did not, like 
those of his father and brother, complicate his public 
policy. All one can say about this is that, when he pro- 
fessed penitence, he seems to have been sincerely peni- 
tent. His best trait is the forgivingness of his character, 
and that is especially shown in his treatment of John. 

The accession of such a prince might well be watched 
with interest ; but Richard was as yet scarcely known in 
England. He had been born, indeed, either at Oxford 



ii4 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1190. 

or at Woodstock, and his nurse was a Wiltshire or Ox- 
fordshire woman ; but when quite a child he had been 
taken abroad, and had only visited England two or three 
times for a month or so since. Hence, although he was^ 
a fair scholar and a poet, it may be questioned whether 
he could speak a sentence in English. He had been 
educated, in fact, to be Duke of Aquitaine, and it was 
only since his brother's death that he had been an ob- 
ject of interest on this side the Channel. No doubt 
changes were looked for ; and in one respect change 
came, for very early he removed Glanvill from the office 
of Justiciar and made him pay a very heavy fine before 
he released him from custody. But this act was proba- 
bly one of greed rather than of policy, for he wanted 
money, and did not speculate on statecraft. Glanvill, 
too, was bound on the Crusade, and was an old man 
whose days of governing were over. 

The same want of money led Richard, in a great 

council which he held at Pipewell in the month of the 

coronation, to sell almost everything that he 

Council of could sell; sheriffdoms, justiceships, church 

Pipewell. . J \ ' 

lands, and appointments of all kinds. To 
the King of Scots he sold the release from the obliga- 
tions which Henry had exacted in the peace of Falaise ; 
to the Bishop of Durham he sold the office of Justiciar, 
or a share in it, and the county of Northumberland ; to 
the Bishop of Winchester he sold the sheriffdom of 
Hampshire, and castles and lands belonging of old to 
his see. Many other prelates paid large sums to secure 
rights and properties which were their own, but which 
were deemed safer for the royal confirmation ; and so 
great were the promises of money made to him that, if 
they had been fulfilled, he would have been richer by 
far than all the kings that were before him. He filled 



A. d. 1 189. Richard Coeur de Lion. 115 

up the bishoprics with officers of his father's court. York 
he gave to his half-brother Geoffrey the Chancellor ; 
Salisbury to Hubert Walter, nephew of the Justiciar 
Glanvill ; London to Richard the son of old Bishop Ni- 
gel of Ely the treasurer, and himself also treasurer and 
historian of the Exchequer. 

He also made great provision for John. He had him 
married, as soon as he could, to the heiress of Glouces- 
ter, to whom he had been so long betrothed, _ . . 

' Provision 

although the archbishop protested that they made for 
were too near akin. He gave him the coun- 
ties of Dorset, Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Derby, and 
Nottingham, with divers other castles and honors ; but he 
would not recognize him as his heir or leave him with a 
settled share in the government. The real power he 
placed in the hands of a man whom he had found for 
himself, William Longchamp, who had gone p r0 motion 

through the usual training in the Chancery, of Long- 
and whom he now made Chancellor and 
Bishop of Ely. To him also he committed the justiciar- 
ship, in partnership with the Bishop of Durham, after the 
death of William de Mandeville, whom he had meant to 
leave as lieutenant-general of the kingdom ; and before 
his final departure on the Crusade he made him sole 
Justiciar, and obtained for him the office of legate from 
Clement III. 

In order to remove the two greatest obstacles to peace 
he bound his two brothers John and Geoffrey 
to stay away for three years from England, so starts on the 
as to leave a clear stage for Longchamp. He ^ r 9 u sade ' 
then prepared for his departure. He left 
England in December. After arranging matters in Nor- 
mandy and Poictou, he proceeded to Vezelai, whence he 
started with Philip soon after midsummer. It may be 



n6 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1189. 

said that, in spite of good intentions, he took away with 
him the men whom it would have been wisest to leave 
behind, Archbishop Baldwin of Canterbury, Ranulf 
Glanvill, and Hubert Walter, and left behind him the 
uneasy spirits whom he might have made useful against 
the infidel, John, Geoffrey, and Longchamp. And this the 
later history proves. At present we will follow Richard. 

The third Crusade, in which he was the foremost actor, 
is one of the most interesting parts of the crusading his- 
tory ; the greatness of the occasion, the 
The T k ird greatness of the heroes, and the greatness 
of the failure, mark it out especially. And 
yet it was not altogether a failure, for it stayed the West- 
ern progress of Saladin, and Islam never again had so 
great a captain. Jerusalem had been taken in the 
autumn of 1187. The king had been taken prisoner 
in the summer. Before or after the capture almost 
every stronghold had been surrendered within the 
territory of Jerusalem. Saving the lordship of Tyre 
and the principalities of Antioch and Tripoli, all the 
Frank possessions had been lost, and only a few moun- 
tain fortresses kept up a hopeless resistance. The 
counsels of the crusaders were divided ; the military 
orders hated and were hated by the Frank nobility ; and 
these, with an admixture of Western adventurers like 
Conrad of Montferrat, played fast and loose with Saladin, 
betraying the interests of Christendom and working up 
in their noble enemy a sum of mistrust and contempt 
which he intended should accumulate till he could take 
full vengeance. 

When King Guy, released from captivity, opened, in 
August, 1 189, the siege of Acre, he was probably con- 
scious that no more futile design was ever attempted. 
Yet it showed an amount of spirit unsuspected by the 



A., d. 1 189. Richard Cceur de Lion. 117 

Western princes, and drew at once to his 
side all the adventurous soldiers of the Cross. A '^f ° 

If he could maintain the siege long enough, 
there were hopes of ultimate success against Saladin, of 
the recovery of the Cross and the Sepulchre, for the 
emperor and the kings of the West were all on the road 
to Palestine. Month after month passsed on. The 
Danes and the Flemings arrived early, but the great hosts 
lagged strangely behind. The great hero Frederick of 
Hohenstaufen started first ; he was to gc by 
land. Like a great king, such as he was, he Frederick. 
first set his realms in order; early in 1188, 
at what was called the Court of God, at Mentz, he called 
his hosts together ; then from Ratisbon, on St. George's 
day, 1 189, he set off, like St. George himself, on a pil- 
grimage against the dragons and enchanters that lay in 
wait for him in the barbarous lands of the Danube and 
in Asia Minor. The dragons were plague and famine, 
the enchanters were Byzantine treachery and Seljukian 
artifice. Through both the true and perfect knight 
passed with neither fear nor reproach. In a little river 
among the mountains of Cilicia he met the strongest 
enemy, and only his bones reached the land of his pil- 
grimage. His people looked for him as the Britons for 
Arthur. They would not believe him dead. Still legend 
places him, asleep but yet alive, in a cave among the 
Thuringian mountains, to awake and come again in the 
great hour of German need. His diminished and per 
ishing army brought famine and pestilence to the be- 
sieging host at Acre. His son Frederick of Swabia, who 
commanded them, died with them ; and the German 
Crusaders who were left— few indeed after the struggle- 
returned to Germany before the close of the Crusade 
under Duke Leopold of Austria. 



n8 The Early Plantage nets, a.d. 1189. 

Next perhaps, after the Emperor, the Crusade de- 
pended on the King- of Sicily — he died four months after 
his father-in-law, Henry II. 

For two years the siege of Acre dragged on its mis- 
erable length. It was a siege within a siege : the Chris- 
Double ti an nost held the Saracen army within the 
Ac?e at walls ; they themselves fortified an en- 
trenched camp ; outside the trench was a 
countless Saracen host besieging the besiegers. The 
command of the sea was disputed, but both parties found 
their supplies in that way, and both suffered together. 

This had been going on for nearly a year before 
Richard and Philip left Vezelai. From Vezelai to Lyons 
the kings marched together; then Philip set 
rTcS.^ out for Genoa, Richard for Marseilles. 
Richard coasted along the Italian shore, 
whiling away the time until his fleet arrived. The ships 
had gone, of course, by the Bay of Biscay and Straits 
of Gibraltar, where they had been drawn into the 
constant crusade going on between the Moors and the 
Portuguese, and lost time also by sailing up to Mar- 
seilles, where they expected to meet the king. Notwith- 
standing the delay they arrived at Messina several 
days before Richard. Philip, whose fleet, such as it was, 
had assembled at Marseilles, reached the place to ren- 
dezvous ten days before him. 

Immediately on Richard's arrival, on September 23, 
Philip took ship, but immediately put back. Richard 
made no attempt to go farther than Messina 
at Acre. g ' S until the spring. It was an unfortunate de- 
lay, but it was absolutely necessary. The 
besiegers of Acre were perishing with plague and famine ; 
provisions were not abundant even in the fleet. To have 
added the English and French armies to the perishing 



A. D. 1 189. Richard Cceur dc Lion. 119 

host would have been suicidal. Some of the English 
barons, however, perished. Ranulf Glanvill went on to 
Acre, and died in the autumn of 11 90; Archbishop 
Baldwin and Hurbert Walter, the Bishop of Salisbury, 
took the military as well as the spiritual command of the 
English contingent ; but the archbishop died in Novem- 
ber, and Hubert found his chief employment in minis- 
tering to the starving soldiers. Queen Sibylla and her 
children were dead also ; and Conrad of Montferrat, 
separating her sister, now the heiress of the Frank king- 
dom, from her youthful husband, prevailed on the pa- 
triarch to marry her to himself, and so to oust King Guy, 
and still more divide the divided camp. The two fac- 
tions were arrayed against one another as bitterly as the 
general exhaustion permitted, when at last Philip and 
Richard came. 

The winter months of 1 190 and the spring of 1 191 had 
been spent by them in very uneasy lodgings at Messina. 
Richard and Philip were, from the very first, 
jealous of one another. Richard was be- J t h Messma 
trothed to Philip's sister, and Philip sus- 
pected him of wishing to break off the engagement. 
Richard's sister Johanna, the widow of William the 
Good, was still in Sicily. Richard wanted to get her 
and her fortune into his hands and out of the hands 
of Tancred, who, with a doubtful claim, had set himself 
up as King of Sicily against Henry of Hohenstaufen, 
who had married the late king's aunt. Now, the Ho- 
henstaufen and the French had always been allies ; 
Richard, through his sister's marriage with Henry the 
Lion, was closely connected with the Welfs, who had 
suffered forfeiture and banishment from the 
policy of Frederick Barbarossa. He was also T^cred. and 
naturally the ally of Tancred, who looked 



1 2 o The Early Plantagenets. a . d . 1 1 9 1 . 

upon him as the head of Norman chivalry. Yet to 
secure his sister he found it necessary to force Tan- 
cred to terms. Whilst Tancred negotiated the people 
of Messina rose against the strangers ; the strangers 
quarrelled among themselves ; Philip planned treachery 
against Richard, and tried to draw Tancred into a con- 
spiracy ; Tancred informed Richard of the treachery. 
Matters were within a hair's breadth of a battle between 
the crusading kings. Philip's strength, however, was 
not equal to his spite, and the air gradually cleared. 
Tancred gave up the queen and her fortune, and ar- 
ranged a marriage for one of his daughters with Arthur 
of Brittany, who was recognized as Richard's heir. 
Soon after Queen Eleanor arrived at Naples with the 
lady Berengaria of Navarre in her company ; where- 
upon, by the advice of Count Philip of Flanders, Philip 
released Richard from the promise to marry his sister ; 
and at last, at the end of March, 1191, the French Cru- 
Kichard saders sailed away to Acre. Richard fol- 

sails from lowed in a few days ; but a storm carrying- 
Messina. . - J _ ' • . J ° 
part of his fleet to Cyprus, he found himself 

obliged to fight with Isaac Comnenus, the Emperor, 
and then to conquer and reform the island, where also 
he was married. After he reached Acre, where he ar- 
rived on June 8, he as well as Philip fell ill, and only after 
a delay of some weeks was able to take part in the siege. 
The town held out a little longer ; but early 
Acre taken, j n j u j^y j t surrendered, and gave the Chris- 
tians once more a footing in the Holy Land. 
Immediately after the capture Philip started homewards, 
leaving his vow of pilgrimage unfulfilled. Richard re- 
mained to complete the conquest. 

The sufferings and the cruelties of this part of the 
history are not pleasant to dwell upon. It is a sad tale 



a. d. 1 191. Richard Cceur de Lion. 121 

to tell how Saladin slew his prisoners, how Richard's 
the Duke of Burgundy and Richard slew campaigns 

* in Palestine. 

theirs ; how Conrad and Guy quarrelled, the 
French supporting Conrad and Richard supporting Guy ; 
how the people perished, and brave and noble knights 
took menial service to earn bread. A more brilliant yet 
scarcely less sad story is the great march of Richard by 
the way of the sea from Acre to Joppa, and his progress, 
after a stay of seven weeks at Joppa, on the way to Jeru- 
salem as far as Ramleh. Every step was dogged by 
Saladin, every straggler cut off, every place of encamp- 
ment won by fighting. Christmas found the king within 
a few miles of Jerusalem ; but he never came within 
reach of it. Had he known the internal condition of the 
city he might have taken it. Jerusalem was in a panic, 
Saladin for once paralyzed by alarm ; but Richard had 
no good intelligence. The Franks insisted that Ascalon 
should be secured before the Holy City was occupied. 
The favorable moment passed away. 

Richard with a heavy heart turned his back on Jeru- 
salem and went to rebuild Ascalon. Before 
that was done the French began to draw Ascalon 

back. The struggle between Guy and Con- 
rad broke out again. Saladin, by Easter 1192, was in 
full force and in good spirits again. Richard performed 
during these months some of the most daring exploits 
of his whole life: capturing the fortresses 
of the south country of Judah, and with a pf 1 ?! ^ of 
small force and incredibly rapid movements 
intercepting the great caravan of the Saracens on the 
borders of the desert. Such acts increased his fame but 
scarcely helped the Crusade. 

In June it became absolutely necessary to determine 
on further steps. Now the French insisted on attacking 



122 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. i i 9 i . 

Jerusalem. Richard had learned caution, and the council 
of the Crusade recommended an expedition to Egypt to se- 
cure the south as Acre barred the north. At last Richard 
yielded to the pressure of the French, and 
March on j n S pjte of the want of water and the ab- 

Jerusalem. r 

surdity of sitting down before the Holy 
City with an enormous army in the middle of summer, 
he led them again to Beit-nuba, four hours' journey 
from Jerusalem. Then the French changed their minds 
again ; and thence, on July 4, began the retreat pre- 
paratory to the return. Richard had been too long away 
from France, whither Philip had returned, and from 
England, where John was waiting for his chances ; he 
began to negotiate for a truce, and in Sep- 
Ketreatand tember, after a dashing exploit at Joppa, in 
which he rescued the town from almost cer- 
tain capture, he arranged a peace for three years three 
months and three days. 

Early in October he left Palestine, the Bishop of Salis- 
bury remaining to lead home the remnant of the host, 
as soon as they had performed the pilgrim- 
journey age which they were to make under the pro- 
tection of Saladin. Richard, impatient of 
delay, and not deeming himself worthy to look on the 
city which he had not strength and grace to win back 
for Christendom, left his fleet and committed himself to 
the ordinary means of transport. After bargaining with 
pirates and smugglers for a passage, and losing time by 
unnecessary hurry, he was shipwrecked on the coast of 
the Adriatic near Aquileia ; travelled in disguise through 
Friuli and part of Salzburg, and was caught by Duke 
Leopold of Austria, his bitter personal enemy, at Vienna 
in December. In March 1193 he was handed over to 
the Emperor Henry VL, who was in correspondence 



a. d. 1 190. Richard Coeur de Lion. 123 

with Philip of France, as Philip was with John. For 
more than a year Richard was in captivity. We may 
take the opportunity of turning back and seeing how 
England had fared during his absence. 

When he started on the Crusade, early in December 
1189, he left the regency in the hands of Bishop Hugh 
of Durham and Bishop William of Ely, the 
Chancellor, with a committee of associate in g g the cm-' 
justices. John and Geoffrey had sworn to sade ' 
stay away for three years. As soon as he was out of the 
country, as early as January, 1 190, the justices quarrelled. 
They were, indeed, very ill-mated. Hugh de Puiset, 
the Bishop of Durham, was a great lord of 
the house of Champagne, nephew to King **ugh de 
Stephen, and cousin to the king : a rich 
man, an old man, the father of a fine family, one son 
being chancellor to the King of France ; a great cap- 
tain, a great hunter, a most splendid builder ; not a very 
clerical character, but altogether a grand figure for 
nearly fifty years of English history. William of Long- 
champ, although perhaps, notwithstanding 

,, r . , . T _ . , William 

the stigma of low birth cast upon him by Long- 
his rivals, a man of good family, was an up- c amp " 
start by the side of Bishop Hugh. He was a man of 
very unpopular manners ; very ambitious for himself 
and his relations, very arrogant, priding himself on his 
Norman blood, but laughed at as a parvenu by the Nor- 
man nobles ; disliking and showing contempt in the 
coarsest way for the English, whose language he would 
not speak and declared that he did not understand ; 
very jealous of a sharer in power, and unscrupulous in 
his use of it. With all this, however, he was, it is cer- 
tain, faithful to Richard ; his designs were all directed 
to the securing and increasing of his master's power, 



124 The Early Planlagenets. a.d. 1190. 

and his bitterest enemies were his master's enemies. 
Richard knew this, and never discarded his minister, al- 
though his unpopularity once endangered the throne, 
and was always so great that he thought it best to keep 
him out of the country. He continued to be chancellor 
as long as he lived. William, as the king's confidant, 
chancellor, justiciar, and prospective legate, was far 
more than a match for Bishop Hugh. They quarrelled 
at the Exchequer as soon as Richard left 
Quarrel of the f or France. The chancellor crossed over 

justices. 

and laid his complaint before the king ; 
then Hugh followed, and obtained a favorable answer ; 
but when he presented the royal letters to Longchamp 
he was arrested and kept in honorable confinement until 
the king's pleasure should be further known. Richard 
was probably aware of this summary treatment of the 
bishop, but he had extracted from his coffers as much 
of his treasure as he was likely for the present to get, 
and he practically rewarded the chancellor by showing 
him increased confidence. In June Longchamp became 
legate of the pope and sole justiciar. 

After Hugh de Puiset's defeat Longchamp had several 

months of practical sovereignty ; supreme in Church 

and State, he travelled about in royal pomp, 

Longchamp making double exactions, as chancellor and 

supreme. & } 

legate, from the religious houses. He forti- 
fied the Tower of London. He punished the rioters at 
York who had attacked the Jews and driven them to de- 
stroy themselves. He put his own brothers into high and 
lucrative posts, married his nephews and nieces to great 
wards of the crown, taught the noble pages of his house- 
hold to serve on the knee, and, partly by misconduct, 
partly by mismanagement and contumelious behaviour 
in general, did his best to make himself intolerable. 



A. d. 1 190. Richard Coeur de Lion. 125 

By this time John was released from the oath to stay 
three years on the Continent and had come to England, 
where he was keeping royal state in his 
castles of Marlborough and Lancaster. J o °^ n tion of 
John's position, if not his ability, made him 
a more formidable antagonist than Bishop Hugh de Pui- 
set, and John's enmity was no doubt first incurred by 
the support which Longchamp gave to the idea that 
Arthur should be Richard's heir. Whether Richard 
really intended Arthur to succeed, or merely allowed 
him to be set up as a check upon John, cannot perhaps 
be certainly decided ; but he was so set up, and Long- 
champ's policy was, for a time, devoted to the securing 
of his claim. For a time John remained quiet, angry at 
not having his proper share of power, but restrained by 
the presence, and probably by the advice, of Eleanor, 
his mother, who certainly never intended that Arthur 
should exclude him from the throne. Eleanor, however, 
early in 1191, went to Messina with Berengaria of Na- 
varre, and probably with the express purpose of laying 
before her son the imprudent behaviour of his chancellor. 
John was thus released from her influence, and in a very 
short time found an opportunity of asserting himself as 
the protector of the nation against the tyranny of Long- 
champ. 

The Chancellor, in pursuance of a deliberate plan for 
maintaining the royal power, was engaged in taking into 
his own hands the many castles which since 
the death of Henry II. had got into untrust- de°mfnc£ mp 
worthy keeping. The importance of this ^stlesT* 
measure, sufficiently clear from the history of 
the two last reigns, justified some severity. Yet action so 
speedy and direct could scarcely have been expected by 
men who had only a year and a half before paid down 



126 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1191. 

large sums of money to Richard for the possessions of 
which they were now deprived. John knew this ; he knew 
that he had himself been kept out of the castles belonging 
to the lordships which were showered upon him, and de- 
termined to avail himself of the first chance to set mat- 
ters right and to obtain recognition of his brother's heir. 
So whilst Longchamp was busy in the West of England 
John took measures for securing the castles of Tickhill 
and Nottingham, the two strongest fortresses to which he 
thought he had a claim. The chance soon came. 

Gerard Camvill, the warden of Lincoln Castle and 
sheriff of the shire, refused to surrender his fortress at 

the command of Longchamp, and appealed 
C 6 m r il to John as his liege lord. John took up arms 

and seized Nottingham and Tickhill. The 
Chancellor went northward to meet him, but no battle 

was fought ; and a truce was made at 
War and Winchester towards the end of April, 1101. 

truces. r y 

This lasted but a short time. Soon after 
the pacification, about midsummer, war broke out again ; 
again the castles were surrendered to John, and a battle 
was imminent. But now a new actor appeared. Rich- 
ard, hearing from his mother of the angry state of the 

kingdom, sent from Messina the Archbishop 

Mission of r b ' __ ■ r - , , ' r 

Walter of of Rouen, Walter of Coutances, an old offi- 

cer of the English court who had been Vice- 
Chancellor to Henry II., with instructions of which 
we have no very certain account, but which probably 
contained two or three alternative courses, one of 
which was the superseding of Longchamp. Just at the 
same time Clement III. died, and it was very uncertain 
whether Celestine III., who succeeded him, would renew 
the legatine commission. The Archbishop of Rouen 
arrived in time to prevent bloodshed ; but he did not 



a. d. 1 191. Richa?'d Cceur de Lion 127 

produce his summary instructions. A second truce was 
made at Winchester in July, and the castles both of the 
king and of John were placed in safe hands. 

Two months had scarcely passed when a third struggle 
occurred. Archbishop Geoffrey of York, released, as he 
said, like John, from his three years' exile, 

J J ' Return of 

returned from his consecration at Tours, and Archbishop 
landed at Dover in September. The Chan- ec rey * 
cellor fearful of his influence and afraid of his coalescing 
with John, tried to prevent his landing. The new arch- 
bishop was sacrilegiously handled by the legate's ser- 
vants, drawn from sanctuary and imprisoned. John took 
up at once his brother's cause, and the bishops and 
barons, indignant that a son of the great King Henry 
should be so treated, compelled the Chancellor to dis- 
avow the act and release the prisoner. Geoffrey, set free, 
went at once to London. John and the Archbishop of 
Rouen collected the barons, and Longchamp shut him- 
self up at Windsor. The barons cried out for his deposi- 
tion, the bishops for his excommunication. Scarcely any 
of the many friends whom he had purchased 
stood by him. It was at last agreed that he r e°moved mp 
should meet the whole body of the baronage f S om . ^ e 

' ° Justiciar- 

at the bridge over the Loddon near Reading, ship, 
early in October.- The barons met there. 
Longchamp's courage failed him ; instead of keeping 
his appointment he started at full speed to London. 
When he arrived there he found that his friends 
were a minority among the citizens, and took re- 
fuge in the Tower. No sooner was he there than 
John and the barons came at full speed after him. 
The next day they held a solemn assembly. The 
Archbishop of Rouen at last exhibited his commis- 
sion and was received as Justiciar. John was recognized 



128 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1192. 

as his brother's representative. Longchamp was com- 
pelled to surrender his castles and go into exile. This 
would seem to have been a case of revolutionary action, 
rather than of the constitutional dismissal of a minister ; 
still it is important in its relation to the theory of the 
responsibility of ministers, and as containing in germ the 
idea that an unworthy minister is amenable to punish- 
ment and deposition at the hands of the nation, and is 
not responsible to his master only. 

Before Christmas King Philip had returned from the 

Crusade and was laying snares for Richard, who was still 

bearing the burden of Christendom in Pales- 

Ptiilip and tine. The first net was spread for John. 

John, 1192. j j in was yer y muc fo disgusted that the 

Archbishop of Rouen had secured all the benefits of 
the late victory over the Chancellor and indignant 
at being kept in order by his mother. He was 
ready enough to betray Richard's interests; he in- 
trigued first with Longchamp, who wanted to return 
to his see ; he accepted bribes in money from 
both. The whole year 1192 affords nothing but a re- 
cord of his machinations, which were for the present 
fulile. But when the news of the capture of Richard 
at Vienna arrived he immediately entered into nego- 
tiations with Philip, bona fide on both sides, to secure 
the crown to himself and to prevent his brother's return. 
These manoeuvres resulted in open war as soon as the 
release of Richard was determined on. 

We must now return to the fortunes of the captive 
king, the news of whose imprisonment took all Europe 

by surprise and shocked all Christendom. 
tions°for ^ reached England in February, 1 193 ; and 

release d ' S *he ^ rst thing the Justiciar did was to send 

two abbots to Germany to seek him. They 



a.d. 1194- Richard C&ur de Lion. 129 

met him at Ochsenfurth, in Bavaria, on his way to 
Worms, where he was to meet the Emperor on Palm 
Sunday. Their first negotiations were friendly enough, 
notwithstanding the alliance which Richard had made 
with Tancred, and his connection with the Welfic family. 
An enormous ransom was demanded, but Richard was 
to have no inconsiderable gift in compensation, that 
little Provencal kingdom which Frederick had been able 
to reclaim, but over which Henry possessed scarcely 
more than nominal sway. Richard was to be made King 
of Aries. In the meantime he was to resign the crown of 
England to Henry VI. as lord of the world, and to receive 
it back again as a tributary fief of the empire ; and 
this our historian says, was done, although the Em- 
peror before his death released nim from the obligation. 

But as soon as Philip and John learned that the trans- 
action was assuming such an amicable shape, they at- 
tempted to prevent the Emperor from ful- 
filling the agreement, and the position of 
parties within the empire gave them fair hopes of attain- 
ing their end. For, in consequence of the murder of the 
Bishop of Liege, in which the Emperor was somehow 
implicated, Henry was at open strife with the great 
barons and lords of the Low Countries. They ham- 
pered his action in his wide-reaching schemes of 
policy ; against them he felt the need of having Phil- 
ip's aid, and he listened to the overtures of Richard's 
enemies. 

John, having so far succeeded in retarding operations, 
secured his castles, and added even Windsor to their 
number ; he gave out that Richard would 
never return ; and although he professed to S>h b n elllon ° f 
collect money for the ransom, collected all 
that he could in his own treasury. Eleanor, however, 



130 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1194. 

and the justices, were too strong for him. Hubert Wal- 
ter too had returned from Palestine ; he, in company 
with the Chancellor, had visited Richard in his prison, 
and had by his recommendation been chosen arch- 
bishop of Canterbury. He undertook to raise the ran- 
som, and to manage John. The whole na- 
Richard's t j on behaved nobly. Enormous contribu- 

ransom. J 

tions were raised ; the knights paid a 
scutage in aid to ransom their lord ; the Cistercians 
surrendered their wool ; the whole people paid a fourth 
of their movable goods, clergy as well as lay. Whether 
all the money that was raised reached the Emperor's 
coffers may fairly be doubted, but the nation paid it, and 
at last by February 1194 the ransom was ready. 

But before Richard was set free it was found necessa- 
ry to buy the help of the lords of the Low Countries, 

and compel Henry to fulfil his promise by 

Release ; threats that they would renounce their al- 

1194. ' 

legiance. He had defied the Pope, and in- 
deed died excommunicate, but he could not stand 
against this pressure. Richard was released, and landed 
in England on the 13th of March. 

England the returning hero found at war. Archbishop 
Hubert, who had succeeded to the justiciarship at Christ- 
mas, had been obliged to look John's treason in the 
face. As archbishop he excommunicated 
him; as justice he condemned him to for- 
feiture ; as lieutenant-general of the king he led an army 
against him. One by one John's castles had been 
taken, and at the time of Richard's landing only Tick- 
hill and Nottingham held out. Tickhill surrendered on 
hearing the news, Nottingham at the arrival of the king. 
John's party at once broke up, and Richard had but to 
show himself to be supreme. 



A. d. 1 194. Richard Cceur de Lion. 13 J 

This is Richard's second and last appearance on 
English soil as king. He staid only from March 13 to 
May 12, 1 19+, but he did a great deal of Richard , s 
business. As soon as Nottingham had sur- £<g£™* 
rendered he called a great council there, 
and for three days acted as chief judge, financier and 
politician ; taxing his friends, condemning his enemies, 
and concocting new plans for the security and quiet ad^ 
ministration of the realm. By selling sheriffdoms, ex- 
acting fines and enacting taxes, he raised money to be- 
gin hostilities with Philip at once. He punished the ene- 
mies of Longchamp and the friends of John, especially 
his chief minister, Hugh of Nunant, Bishop of Coventry, 
who had as bishop and as sheriff offended the laws sec- 
ular and ecclesiastical. But he showed himself by no 
means implacable ; and, before he left, he had recon- 
ciled not only Archbishop Geoffrey and the Chancellor, 
but almost all the other jealous and divided parties. In 
accordance with the recommendation of his council, be- 
fore he left England, he wore his crown in solemn state 
at Winchester ; and, having done fairly well all that he 
had undertaken, showing that his pride, dignity and 
energy had undergone no diminution by his captivity, he 
sailed to Barfleur on the 12th of May, and England saw 
his face no more, heavily as from time to time she felt 
the pressure of his hand. 

From this time all Richard's personal history is un- 
connected with England. From 1 194 to 11 98 the king- 
dom was governed by Hubert Walter, the Governmen tof 
Archbishop of Canterbury, who, like Long- Hubert Wal- 
champ, was both legate and justiciar; Long- 
champ retained the title and emoluments of chancellor, 
but did not come to England. The history of these 
years is simply a record of judicial and financial mea- 



!32 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1194. 

sures taken on the lines and inspired by the motives of 
Henry the Second's policy. Hubert had been his secre- 
tary, and, being the nephew of Ranulf Glanvill, he had 
been fitted by education to be a sound lawyer and 
financier, as well as a good bishop and a successful gen- 
eral. He was a strong minister; and although as a good 
Englishman he made the pressure of his master's hand 
lie as lightly as he could upon the people, as a good 
servant he tried to get out of the people as much trea- 
sure as he could for his master. In the raising of the 
money and in the administration of justice he tried and 
did much to train the people to habits of self-govern- 
ment. He taught them how to assess their taxes by 
jury, to elect the grand jury for the assizes of the judges, 
to choose representative knights to transact legal and 
judicial work ; — such representative knights as at a later 
time made convenient precedents for parliamentary re- 
presentation. The whole working of elective and re- 
presentative institutions gained greatly under his man- 
agement — he educated the people against the better time 
to come. But he collected vast sums — eleven hundred 
thousand pounds, it was said, in four years — beyond the 
ordinary revenue. He allowed no evasions. The king 
watched him closely ; threatened reforms which would 
increase the exactions of the treasuiy, and directed the 
formation of a new national survey, or at least tried to 
force one on the country. The people of London, worked 
on by the demagogue William Fitz Osbert, insisted on a 
new mode of assessment in which the taxes would be 
collected in proportion to the means of the payers, and 
not by a simple poll tax. This project might be just, 
but was promoted by revolutionary means ; Hubert sum- 
marily cowed the rioters into submission. He went to 
the very extreme of what was right to serve Richard, 



a.d. 1 198. Richard Cceur de Lion. 133 

and at last he gave in to the number of influences which 
combined to weary him of a position of power too great 
to be undertaken by any single person. 

This occasion is a memorable one. In the spring of 
1 198 Richard, as usual, wanted money, and had ex- 
hausted all the usual means of procuring it. „ 

Money refused 

He accordingly directed Hubert to propose by the Great 
to the assembled barons and bishops that ouncl ' " 9 ' 
they should maintain for him, during his war, a force of 
three hundred knights, to be paid a sum of three shil- 
lings a day. To the archbishop's amazement, for the 
first time for five-and-thirty years, for the second time in 
English history, the demand was disputed. Again the 
opposition was led by a bishop, as then by St. Thomas, 
this time by St. Hugh. That great Hugh of Lincoln, 
the Burgundian Carthusian who had won the heart of 
Henry II. and had treated him as an equal, now acted 
on behalf of the nation to which he had joined himself. 
Herbert, the Bishop of Salisbury, the son of Henry's 
old servant, Richard of Ilchester, followed the example. 
The estates of their churches were not bound, they said, 
to afford the king military service except within the four 
seas ; they would not furnish it for foreign warfare. The 
opposition prevailed ; the bishops had struck a chord 
which awoke the baronage. This body now, to a far 
greater extent than before, consisted of men who had 
little interest in Normandy, were far more English in 
sympathy, and perhaps also in blood, than they had 
been under Henry II. The occasion is marked by an- 
other consequence. The great minister re- R es j gnation o{ 
signed — not perhaps merely on this account the Justiciar. 
— he had long been weary of his office ; the new Pope, 
Innocent III., was telling him that it was unworthy of 
an archbishop to act as a secular judge and taskmaster. 



134 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1198. 

The monks of his cathedral were harassing him about 
the sacrilege involved in the execution of William Fitz 
Osbert, whom he had ordered to be taken from sanc- 
tuary and hanged ; and the Roman lawyers were 
threatening excommunication if he did not pull down 
the grand new college which he had built in honor of 
St. Thomas at Lambeth. He had had as much as he 
wanted of power, and as much as he could bear of 
blame. He, therefore, in July, 1198, made way for a 
Gtoffrey new justiciar, Geoffrey Fitz Peter, Earl of Es- 

FitzPeter. sex> w h h ac i no SU ch scruples of conscience 

and no such ecclesiastical embarrassments, but who be- 
gan his administration with a severe forest assize, and by 
his general sternness taught the nation how good a 
friend, with all his short-comings, Archbishop Hubert had 
been. Geoffrey Fitz Peter retained his office for life, dying, 
as will be seen, at a critical period in the next reign. 

During this time Richard was engaged in foiling the 
projects of Philip, and drawing together the strings of a 
great Continental alliance against him. Al- 
kst h vears ternate interviews, battles, treaties, or pro- 

jects of treaties, truces and truce-breakings , 
form the history of years, interesting only to those who 
care to follow the military and geographical side of the 
history. Philip gains strength on the whole ; it would 
not be true to say that Richard loses strength, and he 
would probably, if he had lived, have completely over- 
whelmed his enemy. But still they were more on an 
equality than they had been, Philip gaining experience 
which was far more valuable to him than any mere ac- 
cess of force. In 1198 Richard made a great step, by 
Otho of securing the crown of Germany for his 

Saxony, nephew, the son of Henry, the Lion of 

emperqr. L J 

Saxony, who had been brought up at the 



a.d. 1 198. Richard Coeur de Lion. 135 

English court, and was, of course, in the closest alliance 
with his benefactor. With Otho's aid he drew in all the 
Flemish nobles and the Low Country Germans, who 
hated the Hohenstaufen, and so hated their ally the 
King of France not only as a bad neighbor but as an 
ally of the Emperor. This confederation might ulti- 
mately have been successful if Richard had lived to 
guide it. He had at last by patient and forgiving 
kindness drawn John from Philip's side ; he had got the 
King of Scots also safe under his influence. 

In the spring of 1199 he was, as usual, in appearance 
negotiating a peace, probably in reality meditating a 
brisker war, when he heard that the Viscount Death of 

of Limoges had found a great buried trea- Richard, 

° ° I1Q 9- 

sure : a golden emperor and all his court 
sitting at a golden table. The very name of the gold 
aroused Richard: he demanded his share — the lion's 
share. The viscount gave, but not all. So the king 
besieged his castles ; and before one of them, Chalus- 
Chabrol, he received a wound in the shoulder, which 
the awkwardness of the surgeons made mortal to him. 
He lived long enough to set his house in order. He left 
his jewels to Otho ; John he declared his heir, and 
directed the barons to swear allegiance to him ; he sent 
for his mother to receive his last words ; he ordered the 
man who had wounded him to be set free, and declared 
his forgiveness of all his enemies. Then in an agony of 
penitence he made a very solemn and very sad confession. 
It was said that he had not confessed for seven years, 
because he would not profess to be reconciled to Philip ; 
and he had much besides that to ask pardon for. After 
receiving the last sacraments he closed his laborious life 
on the 7th of April, and was buried with his father, by 
St. Hugh of Lincoln, in the abbey church of Fontevraud ; 



136 The Early Plantageneis. A.D.1199. 

a very strong man, who knew at least his own need of 
mercy. 



CHAPTER VII. 



John. 

John's succession — Arthur's claims — Loss of Normandy — Quarrel 
with the Church — Submission to the Pope— Quarrel with the 
Barons — The Great Charter and its consequences — Arrival of 
Lewis— John's death. 

The death of Richard placed John at last in the position 
for which he had toiled and intrigued so long ; not, it 

is true, without a competitor, and that one 
Arthur^ whose claims were destined, after his own 

death, to be fatal to John's retention of half 
his possessions. But the competitor was for the moment 
in the background, and in England at least never 
gained a footing or gathered the semblance of a party. 
Arthur was now twelve years old ; his mother, Constance 
of Brittany, who was left a widow before he was born, 
had been married in the year of his birth to Earl Ranulf 
of Chester, whom she disliked, and who, after having 
been married to her for some years, found himself una- 
ble to manage her, and, following the example of Henry 
II., imprisoned her. She was an imprudent, probably a 
bad woman, as her later conduct tends to show ; but it 
may be questioned whether, in her management of her 
hereditary state of Brittany, she went farther than any 
good patriot might go in opposition to the centralizing 
policy by which Richard carried out the schemes of his 
father. Anyhow she had made herself the champion of 



a.d. 1 199. John: jtf 

the independence of Brittany, and so had imperilled 
the chances of her son's succession to the right of the in- 
heritance. She seems to have been in constant oppo- 
sition to Richard, and likewise to Eleanor, who alone 
after Richard's death could have maintained Arthur's 
rights. It is probably for this reason that, after Richard 
returned from the Crusade, we never again hear of 
Arthur as heir; that John therefore, although person- 
ally disliked, was accepted as an inevitable necessity ; 
and that Arthur, when he was old enough to act for him- 
self, ruined his own cause by his wanton attack upon 
his grandmother. 

John seems to have known that England was safely 
his own. He had bound the baronage by oath to agree 
to his succession as early as 1 191 ; he had John 
a faithful friend in the Archbishop of Can- secures 
terbury, who transferred to him the devotion 
which he had always shown to Richard, and had con- 
sented to become his chancellor. He was willing to 
make any sort of promises to secure those of the mao-- 
nates who were not already pledged to him. He spent, 
therefore, the first six weeks of his reign in France, 
making good his hold on Normandy, and providing for 
the maintenance of peace with Philip. Meanwhile he 
sent the archbishop to England, to smooth his way there 
and prepare for the coronation. 

The difficulties which Hubert had to encounter were 
not caused by the question of the succession, but by the 
attitude of the great earls, all of whom had 
something to gain by the possible reversal England" 

of that repressive policy which had been 
pursued for the last twenty-six years, and some of whom 
had on former occasions taken a leading part against 
John, which he might now embrace the opportunity of 

K 



138 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1199. 

avenging. A reactionary feudal party, a party of per- 
sonal opponents, and a body of ambitious self-seekers, 
might all together, if they had taken up Arthur's cause, 
have given John much trouble ; but they contented 
themselves, as it was, with stating their grievances, and 
the archbishop was empowered to make any concessions 
that would appease them. The state of the country was 
not so peaceful as it had been during the last interreg- 
num. The disturbers of public order took advantage 
of the attitude of the earls to plunder and ravage ; but 
the strong arm of the justiciar avenged what he could 
not prevent, and, after a formal debate held between 
Hubert and the earls at Northampton, peace was re- 
stored, and the promises of John accepted as conclusive 
at all events for the present. 

On Ascension-day accordingly he presented himself 
at Westminster, and was there chosen, anointed, and con- 
secrated with great splendor. On this occa- 
John's s j on foe ancient doctrine of election to 

coronation. 

the crown was vindicated in word and deed. 
Matthew Paris, the historian of this and the next reign, a 
writer who hated John with inveterate hatred, and who 
has therefore been suspected of having inserted in his 
work some things which never took place, has put in the 
mouth of the archbishop a somewhat elaborate speech, 
in which he declares that the crown of England is 
elective rather than hereditary, and that John's title to 
the succession lies in the fact that he has been chosen 
king, as the first and strongest and most famous of the 
royal house. That some declaration of the kind was 
made is certain, for it is quoted by Lewis of France 
in the manifesto issued when he landed in England in 
1216; but the historian draws suspicion upon his own 
account of it by saying that Hubert had a prophetic fore- 



a.d. 1 199. John. 139 

sight in doing this ; that he foresaw John's misrule and 
insisted on his elective title as one that might be set aside 
hereafter. But in whatever terms the fact of the election 
was stated, and whether the claim of Arthur was denied 
or passed over in silence, it is important as showing the 
accepted doctrine of election in the thirteenth century. 
Arthur, according to the principles of inheritance of fiefs, 
as they were now admitted in England, was clearly his 
uncle's heir. The election of John was, and perhaps was 
understood to be, a recurrence to the older rule by which 
the national choice of a king was directed to the ablest 
or eldest or most prominent member of the royal house. 
Although we have a detailed account of John's coro- 
nation we find no mention of a charter, such as Henry II. 
and Stephen had issued. Richard had not 
issued one, but had contented himself with Coronation 

' % m oath. 

the three strong promises included in the 
coronation oath — to defend the Church, to maintain jus- 
tice, and to make good laws, abolishing evil customs. 
John did the same ; and, as the oath was again required 
of him after his reconciliation with Langton in 1213, we 
may without hesitation infer that no charter was granted 
at the coronation. 

The history of John's reign may conveniently be ar- 
ranged in three divisions, which fell into a nearly chro- 
nological sequence ; first, the foreign rela- 
tions, including the war with Philip, the fate menTof "the 
of Arthur, and the loss of Normandy ; se- chapter, 
condly, the dispute with the clergy, and the interdict and 
submission to Rome ; and thirdly, the events that led to 
and flowed from the granting of Magna Charta. In each 
of these divisions of our period we find certain persons 
coming to the front as the mainstay of John's power, 
at whose death that power, in one region or another, 



140 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1199, 

seems at once to suffer collapse. Of these the first is his 
mother, the great source and prop of his 
Queen Continental position. Of her character 

enough has been said already ; her better 
points come out most strongly in her old age, when 
we see her, between seventy and eighty years old, 
running about from one end of Europe to another 
to patch up truces, to make peaces, and to close wars 
which sprang mainly out of her own levity and intri- 
guing of half a century past. She had engaged in a life- 
long quarrel with her first husband in 11 50, and with her 
second in 1 173 ; now in 1200 she fetches a grand-daughter 
of the second to marry the grandson of the first, as a 
pledge of harmony between the sons of the two. John's 
fortunes are not wholly hopeless until he loses his 
mother. 

Richard's unexpected death occurred during a nego- 
tiation for peace with Philip ; and John succeeded at once, 
just as Richard himself had done, to the 
claims in whole accumulation of dynastic and territo- 

France. r j a j g r i ev ances, which had been mounting 

up for fifty years ; with the addition of Arthur's claims, 
which gave Philip the opportunity of interfering in every 
possible question. Before the coronation these claims 
had been raised ; Philip had determined to be be- 
forehand, and had seized the city of Evreux on the receipt 
of the news of Richard's death. At the same moment 
the barons of Anjou, Maine, and Touraine had declared 
Arthur their count, and Constance had delivered him 
bodily into Philip's keeping. John, in revenge for this, 
had destroyed the walls and imprisoned the citizens of le 
Mans, which he regarded as the stronghold of Arthur's 
party. He returned to Normandy directly after the coro- 
nation, on June 20, and made a truce with Philip for two 



A.D. 1 1 99. John. 141 

months, during which Philip accepted Arthur's homage 
for all the Continental estates of the family and consti- 
tuted himself his champion. Immediately on the expira- 
tion of the truce the kings met again, and Philip then 
proposed by way of compromise that John should retain 
Normandy, and Arthur have the remaining states, Philip 
himself receiving the Vexin as a remuneration for his good 
offices in thus arbitrating. John refused this, and war 
broke out again, in which Philip showed himself so much 
more anxious for his own interest than for Arthur's that 
the unhappy boy allowed himself to be removed from 
Philip's protection and placed under John's. He dis- 
covered his mistake, however, almost instantly, and fled 
from his uncle's court to Angers, in company with his 
mother, who took the opportunity of finally breaking with 
the Earl of Chester, and without waiting for a divorce, 
bestowed herself in marriage on Guy, a brother of the 
Viscount Thouars. 

Upon this John and Philip made a fresh truce which 
grew into a peace, by which Arthur's interests were 
finally sacrificed, and which was cemented 
by the marriage of Blanche of Castile, John's between 
niece, to Lewis, the son and heir of Philip. J° h , n and 

ry,. . r .rnilip, 1200, 

1 his was accomplished in May 1 200. Philip's 
matrimonial difficulties, which arose from his wanton re- 
pudiation of his second wife, Ingeburga of Denmark, 
exposed him at the time to a threat of interdict, and he 
probably thought it wise not to have both John and Inno-~~ 
cent III. arrayed against him at once. John, seeing the 
marriage laws practically in abeyance, had taken advan- 
tage of the objection which had been raised 
by Archbishop Baldwin to his marriage, John's 

ji ii> marriage. 

and released himself from his wife, Hawis- 

ia of Gloucester, on the ground of relationship. Now 



142 The Early Plantagenets. a. d.ii 83. 

inspired either by love or territorial covetousnesss, 
he married Isabella, the child-heiress of the Count of An- 
gouleme. This marriage offended on the one side of the 
Channel, Hugh of la Marche, who was betrothed to her, 
and on the other side the great kinsmen of the house of 
Gloucester, and the lady Hawisia herself, who subse- 
quently married Geoffrey de Mandeville, one of the 
bitterest of John's enemies. 

The peace did not last longer than Philip's domestic 
difficulties, which came to an end on his consenting to 
receive back Ingeburga. Mischief began in 1201, both on 

the Norman frontier, where Hugh de Gour- 
Forfeiture of na y pi a y e d f as t and loose between the kings, 

and in Poictou, where the barons were ex- 
cited by the Count of la Marche to rebel against the 
severe repression exercised by John. The next year 
Philip summoned courage to call John before his court 
of the peers of France to answer the charges of the 
Poictevins, and on his non-appearance declared him to 
have forfeited his fiefs. Arthur, who was now fifteen, 
and who had lost his mother the year before, thought 
that this was his opportunity. He mustered his forces 
and attempted to seize the old queen Eleanor in the cas- 
tle of Mirabel. Instead of taking her he was defeaied 
and captured by John, who imprisoned him, and in 

whose hands he died, how we know not, 
Arthur ° f on April 3, 1203. Philip did not hesitate to 

declare John the boy's murderer ; he held 
another court upon him, and again sentenced him to 
forfeiture. This time he undertook the execution of the 
sentence himself. He invaded Normandy, and took city 
Loss of Nor- after city. John did not raise a hand in its 
mandy and defence, and quitted the duchy finally in 

November. The next year, 1204, saw Anjou 



a.d. 1 201-5. John. 143 

and the rest of the patrimony in Philip's hands ; the loss 
of most of the Guienne followed. Eleanor died on April i, 
1204, and on her death John's cause became hopeless. 
He did little or nothing to redeem it. In 1206 he tried 
to recover Poictou, but was obliged to purchase a truce 
by resigning his claims on the northern provinces ; and 
in 1 2 14, as a part of a general scheme of attack upon 
Philip, in which he had the support of Flanders and the 
Empire, he made another expedition, but it also ended 
in a truce by which some small fragments of Eleanor's 
inheritance were preserved to her grandchildren. 

Thus then, after a union of a hundred and forty 
years, Normandy was separated from England. During 
a portion of those years,— the reigns of 
William Rufus and part of that of Henry o^E^giand 
I., — they had been under different rulers, ^Ji^" 
but they had been administered on the 
same principles and for the same interest all the time. 
The English had been ruled by Norman lords ; their 
laws, institutions, customs, had been remodeled under 
Norman influences. But they had grown under and 
through the discipline. So far as English and Normans 
united, the Norman element gave strength, order, disci- 
pline to the English ; so far as they were in opposition 
the Norman tyranny had called forth in the English pa-' 
tience, perseverance, and a sense of nationality which 
they had not shown before. The people had had to 
make common cause with the king against the Norman 
feudalism, and they had done this until their support 
became absolutely necessary to the royal power. Grad- 
ually the baronage were learning the like lesson ; disci- 
plined and educated under the royal training, they were 
finding that they were one in interest with the people ; 
and that, as the royal power was becoming too great for 



144 The. Early Plantagenets. A. D. 1205. 

either, the two might in time combine to curb it. They 
were becoming themselves more English — more English 
perhaps in blood, more English in the possession of 
English lands and by the gradual devolution of Nor- 
man lands into other hands ; ready to be quite English 
when once they lost their Norman incumbrances. So 
when the time came for the barons who had lands in 
both countries to make their choice between John and 
Philip, the division was effected with little noise and less 
trouble. The Norman barons and prelates gave up their 
English lands, and the English — for henceforth these 
have a right to the name of English — barons and pre- 
lates gave up their Norman lands. There was very lit- 
tle internal division in Normandy itself, and Walter of 
Coutances, who had been Richard's prime minister and 
justiciar, died a contented subject of Philip. The sepa- 
ration did much for England. Henceforth the king is 
mainly if not solely King of England, and the welfare 
of England the main if not the sole object of English 
counsels. It was Normandy that, by the exchange of 
masters, lost the 'share of the benefits won from John. 
Yet Normandy was for ages freer than the rest of 
France, in consequence of her early discipline under the 
house of Rollo, one part of which was the policy which 
made her run in harness with the English people. But 
to detail all the benefits of the separation would be to 
anticipate very much of the later history. 

No sooner was Normandy lost than John's ecclesias- 
tical troubles began ; and they began in the most dan- 
gerous way, for the very event that caused them robbed 
him of the only counsellor he had who could have 
Death of guided him safely through them. Hubert 

Hubert Walter, the Archbishop of Canterbury — 

whose career we have traced first as a 



a.d. 1205. John. 145 

chaplain to Henry II., then as Bishop of Salisbury, 
counsellor, captain and chaplain to the third Crusade ; 
then as Chief Justiciar of England, Archbishop of Can- 
terbury, and legate, making laws and canons, leading 
armies, administering justice, collecting taxes, under 
Richard ; and lastly, acting as Chancellor to John from 
the coronation to his death — Hubert Walter died on 
July 12, 1205. 

The appointment to the archbishopric had been for 
many years a vexed question. The monks of Christ 
Church, Canterbury, claimed the right of 
free election ; they were the chapter of the election at 
cathedral, and had the same right as any Canterbury. 
other chapter to elect their prelate. It was a right that 
was distinctly recognised by the canon law, had been 
granted by Stephen's charter, and had been so far 
made good at each change in the primacy that certain 
forms of election by them had been required as needful 
to the validity of the appointment. But the bishops of 
the province of Canterbury, whose chief and judge the 
archbishop was, also claimed a right in the election, 
partly on mere grounds of equity, but partly also on the 
ground of a prescription which, based on the precedent 
of the Anglo-Saxon councils, had given them an active 
influence on each occasion since the reign of Henry I. 
And besides these the king had his right ; the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury was his chief constitutional coun- 
sellor, the counsellor of whom he could not rid himself 
without breaking at once with religion and state custom. 
The king had generally since the Conquest nominated 
the archbishop, sometimes with and sometimes without 
the co-operation of the other two bodies, but always 
practically by his own fiat ; and the pacification between 
Henry I. and Anselm had contained an admission that 



146 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1206. 

the homage of the archbishop elect to the king was 
necessary to the full right to exercise his constitutional 
power. Usually, however, as was generally done where 
the canon law and national law ran counter or over- 
lapped one another, the end in view was secured by 
adroit management, saving the rights of each party, for 
the time. The quarrel on this occasion began with the 
monks of Canterbury. 

This famous convent, which deserves on more than 
one occasion credit for having set a courageous example 
of opposition to tyranny, was a very ambi- 
theTsub- ° tious and disorderly body; and just at this 
pnor - moment, having compelled Archbishop 

Hubert to pull down his grand new church at Lambeth, 
they, or a part of them, were quite intoxicated with con- 
ceit. It was always a great object with them to have a 
monk for archbishop ; such a leader would extend their 
privileges and foster their ideas of independence. So 
now, during the night following Hubert's death, the 
younger monks -no doubt a majority of the body — 
elected the sub-prior, Reginald, as archbishop, and, 
without asking the royal consent, sent him off at once 
to Rome to ask for the archiepiscopal pall and consecra- 
tion. No sooner had Reginald crossed the Channel than, 
forgetting the promise of secrecy with which his electors 
had bound him, he gave out that he was the new arch- 
bishop, and the news came back to England. 

John was very angry ; he had intended his minister 
John de Gray, Bishop of Norwich, to be Hubert's suc- 
cessor ; the bishops were angry because 

Nomination . . . • i i • i . 

of John de their prescriptive and equitable right was 
Gray " disregarded ; the senior monks were angry 

because they had been betrayed by the juniors, and the 
juniors because Reginald by his imprudent vanity had 



A.D. 1206. John, 147 

caused the premature discovery of their schemes. So 
all parties appealed to the Pope ; and John, without 
waiting to hear what became of the appeal, had his 
nominee elected and put in possession of the estates of 
the see. 

We can hardly doubt that, if John had had an adviser 
like Hubert, he might have tided over the difficulty, but 
now he plunged deeper and deeper, and at 
last lost his footing altogether. The Pope i n no"^nt C ii°/ 
let the appeals drag on their weary length. 
He suffered all the contending bodies to spend their 
strength and their money, and to involve and compro- 
mise themselves as much as they chose. Then after a 
year and a half he decided the cause. The bishops, he 
said, had no standing-ground ; the canonical electors 
were the monks of the chapter. The sub-prior Reginald 
was rejected because he had not been canonically 
chosen ; John de Gray was rejected because he had been 
elected whilst an appeal was pending. The course was, 
therefore, clear. The monks were the electors ; theii 
proctors, now at the Court of Rome, had full power 
from them to elect, and the king had promised to con- 
firm their choice, having secretly agreed with them to 
elect only John de Gray ; for thus he had tried to impose 
on the Pope, sending at the same time large sums of 
money to clear the eyes of the Pope's advisers. Inno- 
cent III., however, was very wide-awake, and John's in- 
sincerity had put his game in his own hands. It was of 
no use, he said, to waste time. If they all w r ent back to 
England they would have to come to Rome again for 
the confirmation of the election and the gift of the pall. 
They all had full "powers — why should it not be done 
pleasantly and on the spot ? He had a man fit for the 
place — an Englishman, the first scholar of the day, a 



148 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1207. 

cardinal, in whose favor John had more than once 
written to him on other occasions ; let them elect him, 
he would confirm and consecrate him, and then all 
would be done. Whether Innocent really expected that 
John would submit to this we cannot say ; 

Consecration 

ofStephen probably not. But he did it. Only one of 
ang on, 1207. ^ e monks objected, and reminded his bre- 
thren of their obligation to the king ; the rest, relying on 
their powers from the king and convent, and overawed 
by the dignity and urgency of Innocent, elected Lang- 
ton. Innocent immediately wrote to John to report the 
decision and ask him to receive Langton as archbishop. 
John was furious — refused, threatened, and blustered. 
The Pope, in reply, declared that he had done no more 
than was his duty to the widowed Church, and, in June 

1207, consecrated the archbishop. 

John was obdurate : proposal after proposal was made, 

offer after offer ; letter followed letter, embassy followed 

embassy. John seized the possessions of the convent 

of Christ Church and threatened to wreak vengeance on 

the monks. Then the Pope answered threat 

The Interdict, w j t i 1 threat : if John did not receive the 

1208. J 

archbishop the kingdom must be laid under 

interdict. It would then be unlawful to perform the 
services of the Church, the dead would be unburied, 
the sacraments would cease to be administered, or would 
be celebrated only in private ; the people would be 
forced by the want of spiritual necessaries to compel 
the king to compliance. Still he held out, and in March 
1208 the interdict was proclaimed. He then declared 
that he would be avenged on the bishops ; many of 
them fled, and he seized their lands. Again, after a 
while, negotiations were resumed. Langton came to 
Dover to meet the king, but John would not face him. 



a.d. 1208-13. John. 149 

The Pope threatened personal excommunication ; if that 
were not effective, it should be followed by a Bull of de- 
position and the absolution of the English from their 
obedience. If that were done, the execution of the 
sentence would be committed to one who would be only 
too glad to add England to his dominions, and to gratify 
the hatred that he had nursed for so many years, even 
to Philip of France, the conqueror of Normandy and 
Anjou. 

For a long time John showed himself impenetrable. 
He was quite content that his people should be deprived 
of the sacraments, that the clergy should 
be exiled, that the whole administration of J°^' s obdu " 
the country should be paralyzed, almost as 
it had been in the days of Stephen. Even the terrors 
of personal excommunication had been too lavishly used 
of late to make much impression, for Philip had thriven 
under the anger of Innocent, and John had at this very 
moment his nephew, the Emperor Otho, a partner in 
the tribulation. The threat of deposition might be a 
mere threat ; it would be very strange if the Pope should 
prefer the King of France to the -King of England ; 
and, if he did, John had a great army and fleet and 
treasure. 

But if he thought that Innocent III., would be swayed 
either by the ordinary motives of Popes or by the ordi- 
nary aims of policy, he was much mistaken. 
That great Pope had set before himself a ^^"em. 
grand purpose of righteousness as it ap- 
peared to him ; he was ready to set up the Hohenstaufen 
again and to depress the Welf, and to set Philip, the 
ally of the Hohenstaufen, and the husband of Inge- 
burga, above the other kings of the West, if he could 
gain his object. Innocent persisted. His legates openly 



150 The Early Plantagenets . a . d . 1 2 1 3 . 

warned John what the result would be if the sentence 
of deposition were to issue ; and their words came true. 
John found or fancied himself involved in 
Tohn C ° f a we ^ °^ conspiracy ; warnings reached 

him from Wales and Scotland that his ene- 
mies were intriguing all around him, that he and his 
children would be put out of the throne and a new race 
of kings brought in. Then arose Peter of Wakefield 
and prophesied that on the next Ascension day John 
should be a king no more. Then came the news that 
Philip was equipping his fleet. So the man whom 
neither spiritual nor temporal weapons could bring to 
submission, moved by the prophecy of an impostor, 
lowered his flag and made the most abject submission 
that any king of the English has ever made. 

On the 15th of May, 121 3, he met Pandulf, the Pope' s 
subdeacon and envoy, at Ewell, near Dover, and swore 
fealty to the Pope ; he consented at last to receive Lang- 
ton, to restore the bishops and the monks of Canter- 
bury, and indemnify them for their wrongs : he would 
do all that was asked of him, hold his kingdoms as fiefs 
of the Apostolic see and pay tribute for them. 

The barons and people looked on in amazed acquies- 
cence ; they did not, it would- seem, all at once realize 
the shame of the transaction, or see that for them to be 
vassals of the Pope's vassal was to sink a long step in 
the scale of freedom, whether political or ecclesiastical. 
They acquiesced, some gladly welcoming any solution 
of the difficulty, some, we are told, with grief and shame. 
And so that part of the drama of the reign ends. 

John made friends with the Pope ; but the 
Political strug-gje had thrown the Church into an at- 

result. °° .... 

titude of opposition to the crown in which 
she had never stood since the Conquest. It was a pro- 



A.D. 1 2 13. John. 151 

vidential determination, by which the clergy - who, with 
the people, had hitherto supported the royal power 
against the barons — were, just at the moment when the 
royal power was becoming dangerous, dislodged from 
the side of the crown and almost compelled to make 
common cause with the baronial party and the people ; 
awaking all at once to the need of common action, 
mutual forbearance, and the sense of national unity. 
Such was the effect of the struggle. Henceforth the 
Church in union with the barons and the people helps to 
limit the power which in the earlier days she had striven 
to strengthen. 

But the very moment that closes the ecclesiastical 
quarrel begins a new one — the baronial quarrel, which 
opens the way for the vindication of national 
liberty and the consolidation of constitutional The baromal 

J # quarrel. 

life, as typified by Magna Carta. To realize 
this we must glance back for a moment to the beginning 
of the reign, and recur to the negotiations which Arch- 
bishop Hubert had had with the earls before he obtained 
their consent to receive John as king, and the promise 
he had made that all their lawful demands should be 
satisfied. What those demands were we cannot tell 
exactly ; probably they wanted the custody of their own 
castles and some other privileges of which they had 
been deprived by the strong government of the late king, 
for he had no doubt availed himself of every plea to re- 
strict their forest privileges and perhaps to extend the 
royal right of wardship. It is from Magna Carta itself, 
rather than from the historians who have told the story, 
that we gather the nature of their grievances. The pro • 
mises made at Northampton in 1199 had never been 
fulfilled ; in 1201, when the earls repeated their demands, 
John replied by laying his hands on their castles and by 



152 The Early Plantagenets. a . d . 1213. 

compelling them to surrender their heirs as pledges of 
their good behaviour. Matters had after that gone on 
from bad to worse. Not content with insisting on the 
feudal service of the knights, he had increased the rate of 
carucageand scutage, the two great imposts that affected 
the land, and multiplied the occasions of the exaction. 
Year after year he had collected his forces as if for a 
French war, had brought them to the coast at great ex- 
pense, and then exacted money from the barons as the 
price of their discharge. He had not led them to battle ; 
he had let Normandy fall out of his hands, he had spoiled 
them and put them to shame, implicating them in his own 
cowardice. Year after year taxation increased, whilst the 
king and the kingdom became more really helpless ; for 
all Englishmen hated his hosts of mercenaries, and dis- 
trusted his project of creating a fleet which, far more than 
any national army would be at his own absolute disposal- 
And this went on until, in 1207, he began to plunder the 
clergy, thus giving a respite to the people and the barons. 
Whilst the king could maintain himself by confiscation 
and plunder of the clergy he abstained from confisca- 
tion and plunder of the laity ; and this partly accounts for 
the equanimity with which the interdict was borne. Men 
acquiesced in the loss of their religious rights so long as 
they were in a manner compensated by immunity from 
taxation. The interdict, too, paralyzed national action. 
John was unable to conduct anything like a great war as 
long as that blight lay upon the land ; he could attack 
Wales or Ireland or Scotland, but he could not attack 
France, under the circumstances ; and he was not by 
any means idle now, what few military successes he did 
achieve being won against the Irish. For the nation this 
state of inactivity was less destructive, less expensive 
than war. So, until the crisis of 1213 came, the barons 



a.d. 1 213. John. 153 

sat still ; they had no eminent leader ; Geoffrey Fitz Peter, 
the man in whom as a statesman they had the most con- 
fidence, was the king's prime minister and justiciar. 
This, then, was the state of things when the pacification 
at Ewell put an end to the national paralysis, promised 
the restoration of the Church, a successful resistance to 
Philip, and possibly a recovery of the royal inheritance 
across the Channel. 

The first token of the new life immediately showed 
itself. It was necessary that some delay should take 
place before the interdict was taken off. By 

r . , r . . . , Refusal of the 

the principles of law the injured persons barons to 
must be replaced in their rights before the serve< 
constraining measures could be suspended. Langton 
must be received before the king was absolved, the bishops 
must be indemnified for their losses before the interdict 
could be relaxed. John did not see this ; he knew that 
Philip was preparing for an invasion ; he demanded the 
feudal support of his vassals for a French war; they 
replied that they would not serve under an excommuni- 
cated king. John was provoked, but obliged to wait. In 
July Langton landed, came to Winchester, and absolved 
the king, exacting from him an oath to observe the pro- 
mises made at his coronation, to maintain good laws and 
abolish evil customs. John, now absolved, renewed his 
command to the barons, and they declined to join in an 
expedition which took them away from England. Within 
the four seas they would serve, as bound by their tenure, 
but abroad they would not go. They did not trust the 
king or believe that it was possible to recover Normandy. 
John was savagely wroth. Time was being lost. Philip 
was gaining strength. True, his fleet had been destroyed, 
and the Pope had withdrawn his commission, but there 
were abundant causes of enmity, and at last perhaps the 

L 



154 The Early Plantagenets. A . d . 1 2 1 3 . 

desire of revenge was uppermost. But John always re- 
venged his wrongs on the guiltless and neutral ; he deter- 
mined, whilst his ministers were arranging 
ney n to thT" f° r the suspension of the interdict, to go into 
North. foe North of England and punish the barons, 

for they were chiefly the Northern barons who had re- 
fused to follow him. He set off at full speed, and Lang- 
ton after him, to persuade him to let the matter be settled 
by the lawyers. At Northampton the archbishop over- 
took him and convinced him of the folly of his threats ; 
he went north, however, as far as Durham, and then re- 
turned rapidly to London, where in the month of Octo- 
ber he met the papal legate, Bishop Nicolas of Tusculum, 
who had come to receive his formal homage, and did 
homage to him as the Pope's representative. 

During this hasty journey to Durham and back events 

ever memorable in English history had taken place. On 

the 4th of August the justiciar Geoffrey Fitz- 

Appeal to the t-i , -i i i 11 r~.An 

laws of reter held a great assembly at St. Albans, at 

Henry I. which attended not only the great barons of 

the realm but the representatives of the people of the 
townships of all the royal estates. The object of the 
gathering was to determine the sum due to the bishops 
as an indemnity for their losses, There no doubt the 
commons and the barons had full opportunity of dis- 
cussing their grievances, and the justiciar undertook, in 
the name of his master, that the laws of Henry I. should 
be put in force. Not that they knew much about the 
laws of Henry I., but that the prevailing abuses were re- 
garded as arising from the strong governmental system 
consolidated by Henry II., and they recurred to the state 
of things which preceded that reign, just as under Henry 
I. men had recurred to the reign and laws of Edward 
the Confessor. On the 25th of the same month the arch- 



a.d. 1213. John. 155 

bishop, at a council at St. Paul's, actually produced the 
charter issued by Henry I. at his coronation, and pro- 
posed that it should be presented to the king as the 
embodiment of the institutions which he had promised to 
maintain. Upon this foundation Magna Carta was soon 
to be drawn up. Almost directly after this, in October, 
the justiciar died ; and John, who had hailed the death 
of Hubert Walter as a relief from an unwelcome adviser, 
spoke of Geoffrey with a cruel mockery as gone to join 
his old fellow-minister in hell. Both had acted as re- 
straints on his desire to rule despotically, and the last 
public act of Geoffrey Fitz Peter had been to engage him 
to an undertaking which he had resolved not to keep. 

But matters did not proceed very rapidly. It is more 
than a year before we hear much more of the baronial 
demands. The new legate showed himself j olln goes to 
desirous to gratify the king ; and although France > I2I 4- 
the Northern barons still refused to go on foreign ser- 
vice, he managed to prevent an open struggle. The 
king went to Poictou in February, 12 14, and did not re- 
turn until the next October. In the meanwhile the dam- 
ages of the bishops were ascertained and the interdict 
taken off on the 29th of June. The war on the Conti- 
nent occupied men's minds a good deal. Philip won the 
battle of Bouvines over the forces of Flanders, Germany 
and England, on the 27th of July ; and John did no- 
thing in Poictou to make the North Country barons re- 
gret their determination not to follow him. The great 
confederacy against Philip which Richard had planned, 
and which John had been laboring to bring to bear on 
his adversary, was defeated, and Philip stood forth for 
the moment as the mightiest king in Europe 

Disappointed and ashamed, John returned, resolved 
to master the barons, and found them not only resolved 



156 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1213. 

The party of ^ ut prepared and organized to resist him, 
the barons. perhaps even encouraged by his ill success- 
They had found in Stephen Langton a leader worthy of 
the cause, and able to exalt and inform the defenders of 
it. Among those defenders were men of very various 
sorts ; some who had personal aims merely, some who 
were fitted by education, accomplishments, and patriotic 
sympathies for national champions, some who were car- 
ried away by the general ardor. In general they may 
be divided into three classes ; those Northern barons 
who had begun the quarrel, the constitutional party who 
joined the others in a great meeting held at St. Ed- 
mund's, in November, 12 14, and those who adhered 
later to the cause, when they saw that the king was help- 
less. It was the two former bodies that presented to 
him their demands a few weeks after he returned from 
France. He at once refused all, and began to ma- 
noeuvre to divide the consolidated phalanx. First he 
tried to disable them by demanding the renewal of the 
homages throughout the country and the surrender of 
the castles. He next tried to detach the clergy by 
granting a charter to secure the freedom of election to 
bishoprics; he tried to make terms with individual ba- 
rons; he delayed meeting them from time to time ; he 
took the cross, so that if any hand was raised against 
him it might be paralyzed by the cry of sacrilege ; he 
wrote urgently to the Pope to get him to condemn the 
propositions, and excommunicate the persons, of the ba- 
rons. They likewise presented their complaints at Rome, 
resisted all John's blandishments, and declined to relax 
one of their demands or to give up one of their precau- 
tions. 

Negotiations ceased, and preparations for war began 
about Easter 121 5; the confederates met at Stamford, 



a.d. 1 2 14. John. 157 

then marched to Brackly, Northampton, 
Bedford, Ware, and so to London, where JK^L 
they were received on the 24th of May. The 
news of their entry into London determined the action of 
those who still seemed to adhere to the king, and they 
joined them, leaving him almost destitute of forces, at- 
tended by a few advisers whose hearts were with the 
insurgents, and a body of personal adherents who had 
little or no political weight beside their own unpopu- 
larity. 

Then John saw himself compelled to yield, and he 
yielded; he consented to bind himself with promises in 
which there was nothing sincere but the re- 
luctance with which he conceded them. cSS* 
Magna Carta, the embodiment of the claims 
which the archbishop and barons had based on the charter 
of Henry I., was granted at Runnymede, on June 15, 121 5. 

Magna Carta was a treaty of peace between the king 
and his people, and so is a complete national act. It is 
the first act of the kind, for it differs from the charters 
issued by Henry I., Stephen, and Henry II. not only in 
its greater fulness and perspicuity, but by having a 
distinct machinery provided to carry it out. Twenty- 
five barons were nominated to compel the king to fulfil 
his part. It was not, as has been sometimes said, a 
selfish attempt on the part of the barons and bishops 
to secure their own privileges ; it provided that the com- 
mons of the realm should have the benefit of every 
advantage which the two elder estates had won for them- 
selves, and it bound the barons to treat their own de- 
pendents as it bound the king to treat the barons. Of 
its sixty-three articles, some provided securities for per- 
sonal freedom; no man was to be taken, imprisoned, or 
damaged in person or estate, but by the judgment of his 



158 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1 2 1 5 . 

peers and by the law of the land. Others fixed the rate 
of payments due by the vassal to his lord. Others pre- 
sented rules for national taxation, and for the organiza- 
tion of a national council, without the consent of which 
the king could not tax. Others decreed the banishment 
of the alien servants of John. Although it is not the 
foundation of English liberty, it is the first, the clearest, 
the most united, and historically the most important of 
all the great enunciations of it; and it was a revelation 
of the possibility of freedom to the mediaeval world. The 
maintenance of the Charter becomes from henceforth the 
watchword of English freedom. 

The remaining sixteen months of John's reign were 

a mere anarchy, of which it would be difficult to unravel 

all the causes. In the first place may be 

Attempts to * 

annul the counted the savage wrath of the king at 

being thus defeated and fettered; then the 
unfortunate interference of the Pope, who quashed the 
Charter by a Bull of August 25, and on December 16, 
anathematized the barons singly and collectively ; he 
also peremptorily suspended Archbishop Langton for 
his share in bringing about the result. 

But we are not to lay all the blame of what followed 
on John. It is true that within a few weeks after the 
crisis, he had thrown off all semblance of compliance, 
but the barons were elated with their success, and 
showed very little moderation. They trusted him no 
more than he trusted them. They divided the country 
among their chiefs, some with the idea of enforcing the 
Charter, many no doubt with the desire of humiliating 
the king. Langton's departure for Rome, left them with- 
out the prudent, sincere, and honest English counsel 
that was needed for the successful vindication of the 
national cause, and gave the chief place amongst them 



a.d. 1 215. John. 159 

to men who had personal wrongs to avenge and personal 
objects to attain. Hence the great body that had united 
to produce the Charter broke up into its former elements ; 
some returned to the king's side, the more violent in- 
trigued with France and Scotland. 

John showed himself incapable of using his oppor- 
tunity. The Earl of Essex, the husband of his first wife, 
took the lead on the baronial side ; but 
Robert Fitz Walter and Eustace de Vesey, offered to 
two of the second rank, were leagued with ewis ' 
Philip, and under their influence John was declared to 
have forfeited his crown. Lewis, the heir of France, 
was selected to be the king of the English. War could 
be delayed no longer. The barons began by besieging 
the castles of Northampton and Oxford. John brought 
up his mercenaries to besiege Rochester, a castle which 
the confederates held in the name of the absent arch- 
bishop. He had the first measure of success, and, in 
spite of the attempt of the barons to relieve Rochester, 
captured it, showed a politic mercy to its defenders, and 
then traversed the South of England, securing the popu- 
lation as he went. He kept Christmas at Nottingham, 
then marched north and seized Berwick, striking con- 
sternation into the Scots. The Earl of Sal- 
isbury, his half-brother, commanded in the John's suc- 

* cesses. 

Midland district, and London became the 
last and almost the only refuge of the malcontents. 
Colchester was taken by the king in March, 12 16; and 
up to this point he exhibited military skill and energy 
that shows him to have been not entirely devoid of the 
qualities of his father and brother. 

But now a new actor appears. Lewis, after a long 
delay, arrived in England in May, and at once gave 
spirit and consistency to his party. John retired be- 



1 60 The Early Plantagenets. a.d . 1 2 1 6 . 

Success of fore him and took up a position at Win- 
chester. Lewis marched by Canterbury 
to London, and there received the homage and feal- 
ties of his friends. In spite of the sentence of ex- 
communication actually passed upon him and his ad- 
herents by the new legate, Gualo, he then marched on 
Winchester, John retiring still ; took Winchester, and 
besieged Windsor and Dover. The Northern lords 
joined him first, then the great earls, even the Earl of 
Salisbury himself. John was desperate; he roved up 
and down the country at the head of his banditti, burn- 
ing and plundering and slaying ; whilst Lewis was 
gathering strength and friends every hour. At last, on 
October 19, death overtook the king at Newark. From 
that very day the strength of Lewis, which was based 
on the popular and baronial hatred of John, began to 
decline. It melted away as quickly as it had grown, 
and in less than a year he was obliged to 
Death of make peace and leave England alone. John 

ended thus a life of ignominy in which he 
has no rival in the whole long list of our sovereigns. 
There is no need to attempt an elaborate analysis of his 
character. History has set upon it a darker and deeper 
mark than she has on any other king. He was in every 
way the worst of the whole list : the most vicious, the 
most profane, the most tyrannical, the most false, the 
most short-sighted, the most unscrupulous. 

There was an old legendary prophecy, spoken in a 
dream by an angel to Fulk the Good, Count of Anjou, 
when he had in an ecstasy of fervent charity carried on 
his shoulders a leprous beggar for two leagues to the 
church of Marmoutier. He was told that to the ninth 
generation his successors should extend the bounds of 
their dominion until it was immensely great. The pre 



a.d. 1216. Henry III. 161 

phecy had been fulfilled — to Anjou had been added 
Maine and Normandy, Aquitaine and England ; Pales- 
tine too was ruled by his descendants ; and at last, in 
the person of Otho IV., the seed of the good count had 
reached the summit of earthly ambition. But the time 
fixed by the legend was come. John was the representa- 
tive, of the last generation, with which the blessing 
ended, and the inheritance of Fulk the Good, passed 
into other hands. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

HENRY III. 

Character of Henry — Administration of William Marshall — 
Hubert de Bergh — Henry his own minister — Foreign favor- 
ites — General misgovernment — Papal intrigue and taxation. 

The reign of Henry III. is not only one of the longest 
but one of the most difficult in English history. It con- 
tains more than one great crisis, and coincides in time 
with an epoch of vast progress; but the critical impor- 
tance is by no means equally diffused, and the rate 
and fashion of the progress are matter for minute study, 
rather than for vivid illustration. The reign covers 
more than half of one of the most eventful and brilliant 
centuries of the world's history ; a century made famous 
by the actions of some of the greatest sovereigns, the 
most illustrious scholars, the wisest statesmen ; the most 
noble period of architecture ; the last act of the Crusades, 
the last struggle of the Papacy with the yet undiminished 
strength of the Empire. The life which, on the Conti- 



1 62 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1216. 

nent, runs in these streams is not without its purpose in 
England. 

England also looks on the thirteenth century as her 
great architectural age, the age of her great lawyers and 
some of her greatest divines. She also has her weight 
in European affairs, her struggles with the Papacy, her 
attempts at sound government. But the real interest of 
English history lies in minute constitutional steps of pro- 
gress, which are to be estimated rather by their later and 
united effects, than by the actual and momentary appear- 
ance of growth. For during this time, England has no 
guiding or presiding genius. Her king is a man by no 
means devoid of all the picturesque qualities of his fore- 
fathers, and possessed of some negatively good qualities 
which they had not ; but on the whole a degenerate son 
of such great ancestors, degenerate from their strength 
and virtues as well as from their faults and 
Character of vices. Henry III. is perhaps a better hus- 

Henry 111. 

band and father, a more devout man, than 
any of his predecessors ; he is not personally cruel or 
regardless of human life ; he has no passion for war, no 
insatiable greed for the acquisition of territory, such as 
in the case of his ancestors had cost so much bloodshed. 
He is content for the most part to be king of England, 
and his success in retaining some part of his Continental 
dominion, is the result far more of the honesty of his 
adversary than of any ambition, skill, or force of his 
own. In these respects, England might have been ex- 
pected to fare better under Henry, than she had done 
under John or Richard or Henry II. ; better even than 
she was to fare under Edward I. ; yet she can scarcely, 
even viewed in the results, be said to have done so. 
The long reign was a long period of trouble, suffering, 
and disquietude of every sort. We have no reason to 



a.d. 1216. Henry III. 163 

suppose that- Henry was deficient in personal courage, 
or in skill in arms, such as a brave knight might possess 
without being a great captain in fieldwork or in sieges ; 
or that he was wanting in the desire to be thought a 
splendid and magnificent sovereign— as, indeed, he was 
thought— for he reaped the advantages of the political 
position which Henry II. had planned, and he outlived 
the greater princes whose power and character and 
career had thrown his own into the shade. Yet England 
did nothing great in his time except as against him. He 
had no great design, no energetic purpose. He was not 
strong enough to be true, although he was strong enough 
to be pertinacious, resolute enough to be false. He was 
vain and extravagant ; and this, with the exception of his 
falseness, is the worst that can be said of him. Hence, 
whilst he could not inspire love or loyalty, he could in- 
spire hatred, and hatred is not, in the case of kings, as is 
so often said of the feeling in the case of lower men, in- 
compatible with contempt: a king may inspire both feel- 
ings, and be despised for moral weakness and iniquity, 
whilst he cannot safely be contemned altogether, because 
of his great power to cause mischief. Then, vanity and 
extravagance, which are minor faults in a man with strong 
purposes, become aggravations and incentives to hatred 
in a man whose other motives and purposes are weak. 
Henry III. was well hated. His life, good or evil, had no 
gloss or glitter upon it ; it was mean in the midst of its 
magnificence ; it was wanting in the one element that 
leads men to respect, even where they fear and blame, 
the character of reality or " veracity to a man's self." 
There was no purpose, as there was no faith in it. 

Fifty-six years of such a king cannot but be a weari- 
some lesson to the reader, if the eye rest on the king 
only or on the circle of events of which he is the centre ; 



164 The Early Plantagenets. A.D.1216. 

Division of an H to a certain degree, in these ages in 

the reign. ° ' , & 

which we have to depend chiefly on the his- 
torians of the time, with little help from other sorts of 
literature, the king is necessarily the centre of every cir- 
cle. The monotony of detail may, however, be broken 
by arranging the reign in four divisions. Henry was 
nine years old when he began to reign. The first por- 
tion, then, comprises the years of his minority, and may 
be regarded as closing about the year 1227, although, as 
the influence of his early ministers continued to affect 
him for some years longer, that date is not a very dis- 
tinct limit. The second division comprises the years 
of his personal administration, during which he mis- 
managed matters for himself, and which end at the year 
1258, when, having brought affairs to a dead lock, he 
was obliged to consent to be superseded by a new 
scheme of government embodied in the Provisions of 
Oxford. The third period includes the years of eclipse, 
from 1258 to 1265, when the battle of Evesham gave him 
again the power as well as the name of king. The last 
period contains the seven years intervening between the 
battle of Evesham and the king's death, and depends 
for its historic interest entirely on the fact that it wit- 
nessed the results of the great struggle — the clearing of 
the board after the crisis of the game was past. 

Returning now to the state of affairs in October, 12 16, 
when John had just finished his suicidal career at New- 
ark, we find the kingdom to a very great ex- 
He C n e ry Si iii of tent in the hands of the party pledged to 
support Lewis, the enterprising prince to 
whom the French have not hesitated to attribute the 
title of the Lion, or. the Lion-hearted. This party com- 
prised nearly all the baronage, for John's insane be- 
haviour during the last year had dispersed the friends 



a.d. I2i6. Henry III. l6 5 

whom after the granting of Magna Carta he had gathered 
to his side ; even his brother William, Earl of Salisbury, 
had gone over to the enemy. Lewis's party had, how- 
ever only one point of union, the hatred and distrust 
inspired by John; and when John was once removed, 
the disruption of the party and the expulsion of Lewis 
were sure to come in time. It was certain that all real 
national feeling would take part against a foreign king ; 
that all the desires for free and ancient institutions and 
good government would have a much better chance of 
contentment in the prospect of the reign of the child 
Henry ; and that even the party among the barons 
which still clung to the feudal ideas of government 
would have a much better opportunity of regaining its 
coveted influence through him than through Lewis. But 
the cause of the child was at first sight very weak. John 
had driven all the strong men from his side ; and Arch- 
bishop Langton, on whom the defence of what was now 
become the national dynasty would properly have de- 
volved, was at Rome, in temporary disgrace. It may 
be fairly said that had not the Roman legate Gualo 
taken up a decided line, had not Honorius III. seen his 
way to reconcile the rights of the nation with the main- 
tenance of the Plantagenet dynasty, Lewis must for the 
moment have triumphed, and England would then have 
had to win her freedom by a mortal struggle with 
France. But Gualo was staunch. The great Pope who 
had committed England to him was just dead, but Ho- 
norius III. was no more likely than Innocent to be satis- 
fied with half-service ; and the legate saw that both his 
own prospects of advancement and the credit of the 
Roman see were involved in the success of this admin- 
istration. With him was Peter des Rochos, the Bishop 
of Winchester, whom John had made justiciar after the 



1 66 The Early Plantagenets. A.d 1216. 

death of Geoffrey Fitz Peter. He was a Poictevin who 
had been transformed from a knight into a bishop with 

few qualifications and little ceremony ; but 
Sjjjr 7 ' 9 he was faithful to John and to his son, and 

he was the representative man of the foreign 
party at court, which stood chiefly "if not solely by per- 
sonal attachment to the king. There were two or three 
other bishops who had won their places in John's chan- 
cery, the Earl Ranulf of Chester, nearly the last left of 
the great feudal aristocracy of the Conquest ; William 
Marshall, the Earl of Pembroke, now growing old, who 
had been the intimate friend of the younger Henry, who 
had been a justice and regent under Richard, who had 
helped to set John on the throne, and had remained 
personally faithful to him to the last although his own 
sons were on the side of the barons. 

This little party had the child crowned on October 28, 
at Gloucester ; and on November 12, at Bristol, re-issued 

the Great Charter in his name, with some 
The Charter important omissions. They did not venture 

re-issued. r . ' 

at so critical a time to renew the articles 
which placed taxation in the hands of the national 
council or define the nature of that assembly ; but in 
the final clause of the document these articles were de- 
clared to be suspended only because of the urgency of 
the times. The guardianship of the king and what little 
remained to him of the kingdom was placed in the 
hands of William Marshall, and the bishops and barons 
swore fealty to Henry, as his contemporaries called him 
— Henry IV., or Henry of Winchester, the son of King 
John. The office of guardian for an infant king had 
never yet been needed in England, at least since the 
days of Ethelred the Unready, and all that we know of 
the present arrangement is that it was made in the 



a.d. 1217. Henry III. 167 

council, and with the acquiescence of the legate. The 
title that William Marshall took was " governor of the 
king and kingdom." We might have expected that the 
queen-mother would have been guardian of the person 
of the King ; but he had no near male kinsman to take 
charge of the kingdom, according to the reasonable rule 
that the defence of the inheritance belongs to the nearest 
heir, that of the person to the nearest relation who can- 
not inherit ; and accordingly the wardship of both was 
entrusted by the national council to a chosen leader. 
No other in age, dignity, experience, or faithfulness came 
near the Earl of Pembroke. 

The struggle with Lewis covers the first year of the 
reign. Winter was too far advanced at the time of the 
Bristol Council for much active warfare, and a truce was 
as usual concluded for the Christmas season, purchased 
by the surrender of some of the royal castles. Before 
the new reign began Lewis's side had lost 
two of its representative men — Geoffrey de L e ™|f le W ' th 
Mandeville, Earl of Essex, the leader of the 
old baronial party, and Eustace de Vesey, who had con- 
ducted the intrigues with Scotland and France which 
had brought about the present complication. The great- 
ness of Lewis's early success and the haughty assump- 
tions of his French followers were already disgusting the 
barons, and those who had no cause to despair of par- 
don were contemplating adhesion to Henry. The year 
1217, however, began with brisk action. Henry's sup- 
porters assembled at Oxford, Lewis and his party at 
Cambridge. The military strength was all on the side 
of the latter ; whilst the legate was treating for a truce 
Lewis was besieging and taking castles. Before Lent 
he had reduced the whole of Eastern England, except 
Lincoln, which held out unswervingly under Nicolaa de 



1 68 The Early Plantageneis. a.d. i 2 1 7. 

Camvill, the wife of that Gerard who had drawn John 
into his first quarrel with Longchamp. But at Midlent 
Lewis was summoned to France ; and, although he re- 
turned in a few weeks, he found that some of his sup- 
porters had changed sides. The Earl of Salisbury had 
gone over to his nephew ; the legate was preaching a 
crusade against the disloyal and excommunicated ; and 
the loyal barons bestirred themselves to some purpose. 
They advanced from the West, just as had been the 
case in the end of Stephen's days, Lincoln again appear- 
ing to be the decisive battle-ground, And so it was. 
Lewis returned in an evil mood, determined to treat 
England as a conquered country ; the barons detected his 
design and deserted him one by one. At Whitsuntide 
the king's party advanced to relieve Lincoln under the 
Earl of Pembroke, the Earl of Chester, and the legate. 
Lincoln was relieved at the cost of a battle ; but in the 
battle was slain Lewis's chief captain, the Count of 
Perche, and Saer de Quincy and Robert Fitz- 
B ^ t,e i2 ° f 7 Lm " Walter, the leading spirits of the anti-royal- 
ists, were captured. Lewis was not there, 
but engaged in the siege of Dover Castle, which had not 
yet been taken. On the news of the battle he threw 
himself into London, and there awaited foreign succor. 
The foreign succor came as far as Thanet ; but there, on 
St. Bartholomew's Day, it was beaten and dispersed by 
the English fleet, which thus justified the pains and cost 
that John had spent upon it. 

That defeat decided the struggle ; within a month 

Lewis had consented to make peace and go home. The 

legate showed a wise and politic mercy in 

Departure of treating the rebels as ecclesiastical offenders 

Lewis. ° 

and admitting them to absolution and pen- 
ance ; and William Marshall was not anxious to alienate 



a.d. 1 21 7. Henry III 169 

friends by exacting the penalties for a treason which it 
might be difficult to define, and in which his own family 
was largely implicated. By Michaelmas 1217 the peace 
was restored, and the Charter again re-issued in a still 
more modified form. This may be regarded 
as the ending of the Magna Carta struggle jg^^JSJ. of 
in its first phase. It was now become 
permanently the palladium of English constitutional 
liberty ; it was recognized as the salvation of king and 
kingdom, and the legate, instead of anathematizing, had 
turned and blessed it. 

The rule of William Marshall continued until his 
death, early in 12 19. The kingdom was ostensibly at 
peace ; but order was not easily restored after a struggle 
which had lasted for more than four years, and which 
was itself the result of a long period of misgovernment. 
In the general struggle for power which followed the 
pacification it was not always the wisest or the best men 
that gained the ultimate ascendency. It is clear that 
from the very first there were among the royal counsel- 
lors men who had neither understood nor sympathized 
with the policy of Langton. Hence the omission from 
the re-issued charters of the clauses by which the king 
forbade and renounced unconstitutional taxation, and 
prescribed the order of the national council. Many of 
the men who had been leaders of the baronial party at 
Runnymede had fallen into treasonable complicity with 
France or had perished in the war ; so that the regent 
was forced to give a disproportionate share of power to 
the personal friends of John, foreigners and mercenaries 
as they were, or to men like the Earl of Chester and the 
Count of Aumale, who fought really for their own feudal 
independence. Thus we must account for the power of 
such men as Falkes de Breaute, who almost caused a 

M 



170 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 121 7. 

civil war before he would submit to the law or resign to 

the king the castles which he held as the king's servant. 

Hence also, perhaps, the retention of Hubert de Burgh 

in the justiciarship ; for he, great man as he afterwards 

proved himself, was as yet only known as a creature of 

John. Hence too the distinguished position retained by 

Peter des Roches, although he, as Bishop of Winchester, 

had a dignity and power of his own. Hence, further on, 

the jealousy with which, after the death of the Earl of 

Pembroke, the administration of Hubert de Burgh was 

viewed by the barons, and the constant risings against 

royal favorites and against the too strong government 

exercised in the name of the boy king. These troubles 

furnish nearly all the history of the years of Henry's 

minority. 

The expulsion of the French, the restoration of order, 

and the securing of the validity of the Great Charter by 

successive and solemn confirmations, were the chief debt 

that England owed to William Marshall. So long as he 

lived he was able also to lessen the pressure of the hand 

of the Roman legate and to keep in order the 
Work of r ° -. _ , _ % . 

William foreign servants of John. Early m 12 19 he 

died. Gualo, a few months before, having 
incurred considerable odium by his severe and avaricious 
conduct during an otherwise beneficial administration, 
resigned the legation and returned to Rome. The place 
of the regent was not easy to fill, and no successor was 
appointed with the same power and functions. Peter des 

Roches became guardian of the royal per- 
New Go- son; Pandulf, the envoy of 1213, became 

vernment. . 

legate in Gualo's place ; and these two, 
with Hubert de Burgh as justiciar, formed a sort of tri- 
umvirate or supreme council of regency. Langton had 
now returned from exile ; the Earls of Chester, Salis- 



a.d. 12 20. Henry III. 171 

bury, and Ferrars had gone on Crusade, and matters 
seemed likely to run smoothly for some time. At Whit- 
suntide 1220 Henry was solemnly crowned at Westmin- 
ster at the express command of the Pope, 
by the hands of Archbishop Lang-ton, and Second 

• c ° coronation. 

with all the ceremonies which at the 
Gloucester coronation had been omitted. It was a very 
grand ceremony ; all the due services of the great feuda- 
tories were regularly performed, and it was made a sort 
of typical exhibition of the national restoration. It had 
also a political intention. If Henry was now in full 
possession of his royal dignity, it was high time for him 
to take back into the royal custody the castles which 
through policy or necessity had been hitherto left in 
dangerous hands. The feudal lords must learn to submit 
to Henry III. as they had done to Henry II. ; the foreign 
adventurers must be removed from the posts which 
although they had earned them by fidelity, they had 
made the strongholds of tyranny and oppression. Eng- 
land must be reclaimed for the English, and not even the 
legatine, not even the papal, influence must be allowed 
to retard the national progress towards internal unity 
and prosperity. 

The demand for the restoration of the royal castles 
produced the first outbreak. Just as, at the beginning of 
the reign of Henry II., William of Aumale 
had refused to surrender Scarborough, so Aumale and 
now his grandson refused to surrender g alke t de 
Rockingham. Immediately after the cor- 
onation the king was brought to the siege, but the gar- 
rison fled as he approached. The earl, undismayed, 
seized in 1221 the castles of Biham and Fotheringay ; 
and although he resisted not only the strength of the 
government but the sentence of excommunication also, 



i>j2 The Early Plantagenets. a. d, 1221-23. 

he was forced to submit. In 1222 and 1223 the struggle 
was renewed in more formidable dimensions. The Earl 
of Chester, who had at first supported the government, 
made himself the spokesman of the feudal party ; and 
the foreigners, the chief of whom was Falkes de 
Breaute, did their best to unseat the justiciar, who was 
now recognised as the chief man in the administrative 
council. The evil was increased by the discord in the 
council itself. Peter des Roches was known to prompt 
the resistance to Hubert de Burgh and to be the patron 
of the foreigners ; he neither understood nor loved the 
institutions of England, and although an able and ex- 
perienced man was very ambitious and altogether un- 
scrupulous. In 1224, however, the contest was decided. 
An act of violent insubordination on the part of Falkes 
de Breaute brought down the king and the kingdom 
upon him ; the great conspiracy of which he held the 
strings was broken up, and he himself, notwithstanding 
the secret support of Peter des Roches and the open 
mediation of the Pope, was banished from the land. His 
fall involved the humiliation of the feudal lords who 
were allied with him, and the expulsion of the foreign- 
ers whom he represented and headed. Peter des Roches 
himself had to take a subordinate place. 

Long before this England had been relieved from the 
presence of the legate. In 1220 Langton had gone to 
Rome and obtained a promise that so long 
Hubert de as he lived no other legate should be sent 

Burgh ' to England. Pandulf seems to have re- 

garded the promise as implying his own recall. He was 
weary of his post ; and having obtained his election to 
the see of Norwich, resigned in July 1221. Before the 
end of the year 1224 the able hand of Hubert de Burgh 
had shaken off the three dangerous influences ; he had 



a.d. 1227. Henry III. 173 

reclaimed England for the English. But he had done it 
at considerable cost of taxation. This the country was 
ill able or disposed to bear, and the alarm of war was 
sounding on the side of France, where Lewis succeeded 
his father in 1223. It was in order to obtain from the 
nation a grant of money to defray these ex- 
penses and to equip an army that Henry, Re-issue of 
under Hubert's advice, for the third time **" Charter ' 
confirmed the charter. But, although these were the 
special occasions of the re-issue, the confirmation itself 
is a typical act, and might be regarded as the renewed 
good omen of a happy reign. Most of the hereditary 
enemies of Henry were dead; all foreign influences 
were banished ; the right of the nation to sound and 
good government was recognised by the charter itself 
The general acquiescence in the policy of the adminis- 
tration was shown by the grant of a fifteenth of all mova- 
ble property to the king, which was made conditional 
on the confirmation of the charter, and the national 
union was proved by the long list of prelates and mag- 
nates who attested it. Henry, by altering the terms in 
which he enacted it from the older form, "by the coun- 
cil "of his barons, to" by my spontaneous will," seemed 
to be giving more than a mere official ratification— a per- 
sonal and sincere adhesion to the great formula of the 
constitution. - 

Two years after this Henry came of age, and then be- 
gins not only his dangerous and unbusinesslike med- 
dling with foreign politics but the gradual Henry in 122? 
revelation of the fact that he was not more 
willing than his father had been to act and reign as a 
constitutional king. From this point date the constant 
demands of the Pope on the one hand, and the king on 
the other, for money to be spent on purposes which 



174 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1227. 

called forth little sympathy in England, or which were 
opposed to the national instincts ; constant difficulties 
with the administration, and, consequent upon those dif- 
ficulties, that alienation of popular affection from the 
person of the young sovereign whose growth had been 
intently and hopefully watched — an alienation which 
grew from year to year, as the conviction gained ground 
that he was not to be trusted, any more than he could 
be honored or admired. But for this conviction that se- 
rious attack on his authority, which amounted in the end 
to an absolute superseding or deposition, could have 
been neither contemplated nor carried into effect. This 
was not the mere result of a mismanaged minority. No 
doubt the possession or even the anticipation of the 
possession of great power is a dangerous obstacle to 
education ; and in every case of a royal minority which 
we have in English history we find the same miserable 
story of a most important charge neglected, and the most 
important of all possible trusts unfulfilled. It may be 
that Hubert de Burgh and Peter des Roches had to work 
on an unkindly soil. In the child of John and Isabella 
we should not look for much inherited goodness ; yet 
Richard of Cornwall, Henry's brother, was a very dif- 
ferent man from Henry himself. Still the fault cannot 
be ascribed altogether to education. It would have 
been a sore discipline for a noble mind, but to Henry it 
was fatal. He learned nothing great ; what was good 
in him was dwarfed and warped. 

The history of the thirty-one years, 1227 to 1258, which 
form the period of his personal administration, is one 
long series of impolitic and unprincipled acts. These 
acts may, it is true, be arranged under certain distinct 
heads, but it is not to be forgotten that they were at the 
time the successive expressions of one weak, headstrong 



a.d. 1228. Henry III. 175 

mind, and as such have a unity and a bearing upon one 
another, creating as they proceed a tide of hostile feel- 
ing in the nation that becomes at last overwhelming. It 
would be an unprofitable exercise of ingenuity and pa- 
tience to detail these acts in order of time, and to point 
out how one led to another. They may be divided into 
the three heads of internal misgovernment, a mischievous 
foreign policy pursued under the guidance of the popes, 
and the unfortunate line adopted with regard to the 
French provinces on which the king still retained his hold. 
Under the first of these come Henry's reluctance to 
observe the charters, heavy taxation for a long series of 
years, the revival of the hated system of i nterna i m ; s . 
foreign favoritism, the rash displacement government 
and replacement of ministers, the attempts of the king 
to rule by means of mere clerks and servants without 
proper ministers, and the series of domestic troubles 
which arise from these causes. Under the second head 
come the heavy demands of the popes for p a pal de- 
pecuniary help, or for the preferment of mands. 

Italians in English churches, and the successive attempts 
made by the several pontiffs to use Henry, his wealth, 
and influence in Europe, for the destruction of the house 
of Hohenstaufen, and thus for the promotion of designs 
which worked his final humiliation. Under the third 
come the several expeditions to France, the negotiations 
with Lewis IX., the administration of Gas- Foreign 

cony, and the part taken by Richard of affairs. 

Cornwall and Simon de Montfort in the administration 
of that province. These three lines of mischief com- 
bine to produce the great crisis of 1258, in crisis of 1258. 
which the leading spirit was Simon de 
Montfort, in which the critical and determining cause 
was the negotiation with the Pope for the kingdom of 



176 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1228. 

Sicily, and in which the form of the constitutional de- 
mands made by the opposition was determined by the 
character of the internal misgovernment which had been 
going on so long. Where the same points so frequently 
recur a chronological summary becomes monotonous, 
and a comprehensive sketch is sufficient to convey all 
the lessons that are of real value. 

Henry's first act was an ill-omened one. In January, 

1227, in a council at Oxford, he declared himself of full 

age to govern, emancipated himself from 

Henry of ^he guardianship of Peter des Roches, but 

age 

insisted that all charters and other grants 
sealed during his minority should be regarded as invalid 
until a confirmation of them had been purchased at a 
fixed rate. This declaration, founded, it would seem, 
on a resolution of the council agreed on in 12 18, that no 
grants involving perpetuity should be sealed until he 
came of age, was heard with great alarm. The alarm 
spread further when it was known that the forest bounda- 
ries, which had been settled by perambulation in 1225, 
were to be re-arranged under royal direction. If the 
forest liberties were to be tampered with, the Great 
Charter itself would be in peril. But either the alarm 
was unfounded or the excitement that followed ensured 
its own remedy. Large sums were raised by confirming 
private charters ; but, on a representation made by a 
body of the earls the forest administration was let alone 
and the Great Charter was not threatened. The whole 
project was seen to be a mere expedient for raising 
money. 

Matters went on peacefully for some four or five years, 
and if complaints of misgovernment were heard they 
were, by the ready action of Hubert, who continued to 
be justiciar, either remedied or silenced. From 1227 to 



a.d. 1228. Henry III. 177 

1232 Hubert filled the place of prime minister, in very 
much the same way as Hubert Walter and Geoffrey Fitz- 
Peter had done, sacrificing his own popularity to save 
his master's character, and risking his master's favor by 
lightening the oppressions and exactions of irresponsi- 
ble government. Besides the wars with Wales and 
Scotland which mark these years, and the pecuniary 
demands which were necessarily made for carrying on 
the wars, the chief interest of the period arises from the 
fact that it saw the first of those papal 

claims and exactions which were to exer- Papal taxa- 
tion. 

cise so baneful an influence on the rest of 
the reign. Archbishop Langton died in 1228, and 
Henry's envoys at Rome purchased the confirmation of 
his successor, Archbishop Richard, by promising the 
Pope a heavy subsidy to sustain him in his war with the 
Emperor. When the time came for this demand to be 
laid before the assembled council Earl Ranulf of Chester 
took the lead in opposing it. The means taken notwith- 
standing to exact money roused a strong popular feeling. 
The papal collectors were plundered, the stores taken in 
kind were burned ; and so ineffectual were the means 
taken to suppress the outrages, that suspicion fell, not 
without good reason, on the justiciar himself as conniv- 
ing at this rough justice. Henry was already weary of 
his minister, and his strongest feelings were the devo- 
tion which he consistently maintained towards the 
papacy and his determination, equally resolute, to let no 
scruple prevent him from acquiring money whenever he 
had the opportunity. Peter des Roches, who had been 
absent from England for some years on Crusade, had 
now returned. He lost no opportunity of Fall of 

increasing the king's dislike to Hubert, and Burgh! ^ 
of promoting the interest of the foreigners 



178 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1232. 

who were beginning again to speculate on Henry's weak- 
ness. The king was told that his poverty was owing to 
the dishonesty of his ministers, who were growing rich 
to his disadvantage ; he had no money to carry on war, 
whilst Hubert de Burgh was becoming more powerful in 
acquisitions and alliances, and was even using his influ- 
ence to screen offenders against the Apostolic see. 
Henry was not slow in learning to be ungrateful. He 
had been taught by Hubert himself that he must dis- 
card the favorite servants of his father ; Hubert had to 
exemplify, however unrighteously, his own lesson. 

In July 1232 he was driven from office, overwhelmed, 

as Becket had been, with charges which it was impossible 

definitely to disprove ; and after some vain 

Victory of J , ■, r ■, i 

Peter des attempts to escape, he was before the end 

of the year a prisoner and penniless. His 
successor in the justiciarship was Stephen Segrave, a 
creature of Peter des Roches. Peter himself resumed 
the influence over the unstable king which he had won 
in his early years, and filled the court and ministry with 
foreigners, in whose favor he displaced all the king's 
English servants. 

Hubert's fall was great enough in itself to excite pity; 
even Earl Ranulf of Chester, who had been most opposed 
to him as a minister, was moved to intercede for him. 
But far more than his personal disgrace the reversal of 
his English policy alarmed the baronage. Earl Ranulf, 
the natural head of opposition, died in 1232; Richard 
of Cornwall, who had hitherto shown signs of attachment 
to the national cause, was scarcely fitted to lead an attack 
on his brother's ministers ; the Earl Marshall Richard, 
son of the great regent, and younger brother 
shall." ar " of William Marshall who had married the 
king's sister, became the spokesman of the 



A.D. 1234. Henry TIL 179 

nation. Richard Marshall was one of the most accom- 
plished knights and the most educated gentlemen of the 
age ; but he had to contend against the long experience 
and unscrupulous craft of Peter des Roches. After a 
distinct declaration made by the barons to the king, at 
his suggestion, that they would not meet the Bishop of 
Winchester in court or council, and a positive demand 
for the dismissal of the foreign servants who had been 
placed in office by him, the Earl Marshall was declared 
a traitor. The king marched against him and drove him 
into alliance with the disaffected Welsh. A cruel strata- 
gem of Peter des Roches induced him to cross over to 
Ireland to defend his estates there, and, in a battle into 
which he was drawn by Peter's agents, he was betrayed 
and mortally wounded. For a long time after his death 
the baronage continued to be without a leader of their own. 
The cunning of Bishop Peter prevailed to the destruc- 
tion of Earl Richard, but it was not sufficient to ensure 
his own position. The barons, although they 
lost their leader when the Earl Marshall fled, F e f R 0C P h t s e . r 
were not inclined to be submissive, and the 
bishops, now under the guidance of Edmund of Abing- 
don, the primate consecrated in 1234, insisted that justice 
should be done to the Earl Marshall and that the for- 
eigners should be removed. The king was compelled 
to submit ; Bishop Peter was ordered to retire from court, 
and with him fell the men whom he had patronized. 
But it was too late to do justice to the earl or to stop the 
measures contrived for his ruin. As a matter of fact the 
dismissal of Peter des Roches preceded by a few days 
the death of his victim far away in Ireland. Hubert de 
Burgh, however, profited by the change and regained 
his estates, although not his political power, when his 
rival fell. 



180 The Early Planlagenets. a.d. 1234-44. 

To some extent the administration of Hubert and of 
Peter after him had been a continuance of the royal 
) tutelage; from this time Henry determined to 

pianTf go- be not only king but chief administrator. Ste- 
vemmg. p hen g e g rave had been a very mean succes- 

sor to Hubert in the great office of justiciar ; henceforth the 
officer who bears the name is no longer the lieutenant- 
general of the king, but simply the chief officer of the law 
courts. The supreme direction of affairs Henry kept in 
his own incompetent hands. The position of the chan- 
cellor too was stronger than was convenient to a king 
who intended to have his own way. Ralph Neville, the 
Bishop of Chichester, had received the great seal in 1226, 
by the advice and consent of the great council of the 
nation ; he now refused to surrender it to the king 
except at the express command of the assembly by which 
he had been appointed. Henry succeeded in wresting 
the seal from him in 1238, but he retained the income 
and title of chancellor until his death in 1244. The 
constant petitions of the barons that a properly quali- 
fied justiciar, chancellor, and treasurer should be elected 
or appointed, subject to the approval of the national 
council, show that this independent action of the king 
was regarded with jealousy, and that they had already 
in germ the idea of having the affairs of the kingdom 
administered by men who would be responsible, not 
only as Becket and Hubert de Burgh had been to the 
king, but to the nation, as represented at the time in 
the great council of the barons. 

The history of these years is a series of national 
complaints and royal short-comings and evasions, diver- 
sified by occasional campaigns or splendid 

Influx of • T TT 

foreigners. marriage ceremonies. In 1235 Henry mar- 
ried his sister Isabella to the Emperor Fred- 



a.d. 1234-44- Henry III. 181 

erickll. ; in 1 236 he himself married Eleanor of Provence. 
Both marriages were the occasions of great outlay of mo- 
ney, which the nation was rapidly becoming more 
and more unwilling to pay. Nor was the discon- 
tent owing to taxation only. The queen's relations 
poured into the country as into a newly discovered 
gold-field; dignities, territories, high office in Church 
and State were lavished upon them, and the ru- 
mor went abroad that they were attempting to change 
the constitution of the kingdom. Under their influ- 
ence the old foreign agents who had flourished 
under the patronage of Peter des Roches returned into 
court and council, and brought with them the old abuses 
and the old jealousies in addition to the new. In 1238 
the king gave his sister Fleanor, the widow of William 
Marshall the younger, to Simon de Montfort. The mar- 
riage and subsequent quarrel with Simon served to aug- 
ment the jealousy and divisions at court. In 1242 
Henry made a costly expedition to France, from which 
he returned in 1243 ; a new flood of strangers, this time 
the Poictevin sons and kinsfolk of his mother, followed 
him. In 1244 Earl Richard of Cornwall married the 
queen's sister ; and in 1245 Boniface of Savoy, the queen's 
uncle, was consecrated to the see of Canterbury. 

Each of these years is marked by a struggle about 
taxation conducted in the assembly of barons and bishops, 
which from this time is known both in his- ^onstitu- 
tory and records by the name of Parlia- ti ° i n e ^ ances 
ment. In these discussions the lead is taken 
sometimes by the bishops, sometimes by the barons ; now 
it is the papal, now the royal demands that excite oppo- 
sition. The charters are from time to time confirmed 
as a condition of a money grant ; and as often as money 
is required they are found to need fresh confirmation. 



1 82 The Early Piantagenets. a.d. 1234-44. 

Up to the time of his marriage Earl Richard of Cornwall 
constantly appears among the remonstrants ; Archbishop 
Edmund, as long as his patient endurance lasts, heads the 
opposition of the bishops; Robert Grosseteste, the Bishop 
of Lincoln, the great divine, scholar, and pastor of the 
Church, is not less distinguished as a leader in the plans 
propounded for the maintenance of good government 
and the diminution of the royal power of oppression. 
Every class suffered under the absolute administra- 
tion, but the citizens of London, and the Jews perhaps 
Parliamen- most heavily, as from them without any in- 
tary discus- termediate machinery the king- contrived to 

sions. . J ° 

wring money. Not slowly or gradually, but 
by great and rapid accumulations the heap of national 
grievances grew, and but for the want of a leader a for- 
cible attempt at revolution must have occurred much 
sooner than it did. In 1237 the national council gave 
their money under express conditions, none of which 
were observed, as to the control and purpose of expen- 
diture. In 1242 they presented to the king a long list 
of the exactions to which they had submitted out of their 
good-will to assist him, but from which no good had 
arisen. In 1244, when Henry had assembled the mag- 
nates in the refectory at Westminster and with his own 
mouth had asked for money, the two great estates pres- 
ent, lay and clerical, determined, after debating apart, to 
act in concert, and chose twelve representatives to make 
terms with the king. The twelve, of whom the chief 
were Richard of Cornwall and Simon de Montfort, de- 
manded the confirmation of the charters and the elec- 
tion of a justiciar, chancellor, and treasurer; they 
broached even a plan for constitutional reform according 
to which a perpetual council was to be appointed to 
attend the king and secure the execution of reforms to 



a.d. 1245. Henry III 183 

be embodied in a new charter. Henry first resisted, 
then produced an order from the Pope ; but the barons 
were unable to persevere in their designs. They refused, 
however, to make a large grant, and voted a sum which 
they could not legally object to pay, for the marriage of 
the king's daughter. 

The pages of the great historian, Matthew Paris, teem 
with details like this. Whether money were given or 
refused, the king went on asking for more ; 
whether he met the national complaints with impolicy, 

promise or with insult, the evils remained 
alike unredressed. No permanent ministers were ap- 
pointed ; the king nominated a clerk or a judge from 
time to time to despatch formal business, and every im- 
portant transaction for which he himself was not per- 
sonally competent was left to be settled at haphazard. 
Some good results followed ; the country learned that 
the king was really dependent on the nation, although 
it failed to impress that lesson upon Henry himself; 
every year the machinery for assessing and collecting 
the taxes assumed more and more a representative cha- 
racter, and the forms as well as the spirit of a parlia- 
mentary constitution grew apace. But in the countless 
assemblies which were held during this part of the reign, 
it is not possible to trace any uniformity or even any 
tendency towards a system of representative govern- 
ment. The councils are more busy about their powers 
than about their constitution, and the representative 
machinery already in use for carrying out the executive 
part of the public business does not yet reach the region 
of legislative or supreme taxation. 

No great design is attempted during these years ; the 
barons see no return for the great costs to which the 
king puts them. The King of France goes on Crusade, 



184 .The Early Plantagenets. a. 0.1257. 

but Henry only raises money on the pretext, and spends 
or wastes it on other purposes. The Pope drains the 

kingdom. There are murmurs but no 
^activity blows : no conspiracies, no leader. Simon 

de Montfort is employed in Gascony ; Earl 
Richard minds his own business. The kingdom is again 
handed over to the Poictevins, yet no one has position 
or energy to take the lead. So matters drag on. In 
1248, 1249, 1255, the demands for a regular ministry are 
confirmed ; and now it is desired that they shall be ap- 
pointed by the common council of the nation. In 1237 
and again in 1253, the charters are solemnly renewed, 
and excommunication passed on the transgressors of 
them. In 1254 an assembly is held to grant an aid, to 
which two knights of the shire are called from each 
county, elected by the county court — a very important 
step towards the creation or development of a parliamen- 
tary system. At last, in 1257, by a series of events like 
these, the patience of the baronage is absolutely worn 
out, and the king by an extraordinary act of daring pre- 
sumption gives the signal for the outbreak. 

Our second division of the causes which led to the 
great crisis of the reign, comprises Henry's relations 

with the popes and the papal policy. It is 
the'popes. not a thing to be wondered at that Henry 

should adhere closely to the Pope : for it 
was papal influence that made him king, and his mind 
was formed under religious influences redolent of papal 
ideas. He had to deal too with popes of high and mas- 
terly minds, and bowed implicitly to such. He never 
disputed or quarrelled with any pope ; no point was to 
his mind worth defence. He was just old enough to re- 
member the last days of the Interdict ; he knew how 
Honorius III. had supported him against Philip and 



a.d. 1226-52. Henry III. 185 

Lewis ; he watched the long humiliation of Frederick 
II. by Gregory IX. and Innocent IV. He never knew 
a weak pope. He might have resisted, and would 
have gained immensely by resistance; his 
archbishops, Stephen Langton, Richard le bishops Ch " 
Grand, and Edmund of Abingdon, were 
three model ecclesiastics, men unassailable in the points 
of patriotism, independence, and sanctity. Even Boni- 
face of Savoy, although he was neither an Englishman 
nor a saint, would have boldly resisted the Pope, and 
strengthened the king with his sword if not with his staff. 
But Henry was generally thwarting his archbishops ; he 
alienated their support, and wore out their patience. 
Edmund he drove into exile, by his tyranny and extor- 
tion ; and even Boniface on occasion chose to side with 
the national party rather than to support such a king. 

The string of papal difficulties begins in 1226, when 
the Pope demanded a share of the property of every 
cathedral, church, and monastery. In 1229 
Gregory IX. demanded a tithe of all mova- List of P?P al 

J _ assumptions. 

bles, which only Earl Ranulf of Chester 
had courage to refuse. In 1231, the Roman exactions 
produced public tumults, and led to the quarrel which 
'ruined Hubert de Burgh. In 1237, the king invited Car- 
dinal Otho to reform the Church. He stayed until 1241, 
visited Oxford, and put the University under interdict ; 
visited Scotland in 1239, and in 1240 exacted enormous 
sums for the benefit of the Pope, besides forbidding the 
king to bestow preferment on Englishmen, until three 
hundred Italians had been provided for. In 1244, Inno- 
cent IV. sent a still more intolerable representative, 
Master Martin, who within a year was obliged to fly; 
but neither king nor parliament ventured to refuse 
money. Besides direct payments, a vast proportion of 



1 86 1'he Early Plantagenets. A. d. 1252. 

English livings was held by foreigners. Bishop Grosse 
teste, who regarded these usurpations as the very de- 
struction of the flock for which he was ready to lay down 
his life, declared, that in 1252, the Pope's nominees had 
revenues within the realm three times as great as the 
royal income. There was too, a constant succession of 
appeals to Rome, as the episcopal elections were dispu- 
ted, and the Pope either assumed the power of presenta- 
tion, or sold the justice or injustice that it pleased him to 
dispense. To understand how these vast sums were dis- 
posed of by the popes, involves the careful reading of 
the history of Frederick II. The exactions of Gregory 
IX. begin with the first quarrel with Frederick, and the 
crowning difficulties of Henry III. are caused by his en- 
tanglement with Alexander IV. on the subject of Sicily. 
Yet Frederick II. was his own brother-in-law, and a 
prince who, whatever his faults may have been, suffered 
papal enmity for reasons which had nothing to do with 
his short-comings. Frederick was admired and pitied in 
England as a papal victim. Lewis IX. could refuse to 
be an instrument in his humiliation, but Henry III. 
seems to have tied himself to the Pope's chariot-wheels. 
The Pope and the king, according to the saying of the 
time, left to men only the task of discerning whether the 
upper or the nether millstone were the heaviest 

Fatal as the friendship of Gregory IX. and Innocent 

IV. had been, it was the policy of Alexander IV. which 

broke the long-enduring patience of the 

Henry accepts _ •* . 

the kingdom baronage and compelled them to bind the 
king's hands. Innocent IV. in 1252 had 
offered the kingdom of Sicily to Richard of Cornwall. 
The negotiation went on until in 1255 it was accepted, 
not for Richard, but for Edmund, the king's second son. 
It might have been supposed that as the quarrel was the 



a.d. 1225-54. Henry III. 187 

Pope's Alexander would have hired Henry to fight his 
battles ; but by this adroit system of enlistment he re- 
versed the rule. He fought the battles and expected 
Henry to pay him. Henry was weak enough to bear 
this and even to pledge the credit of the kingdom to the 
Pope for the sum which the crafty Italian money-lender 
had advanced to maintain his own quarrel. It was this 
act that led to the demand for a new constitution, which 
opens the next great epoch of this long dismal reign. 

Henry's French transactions, the third of the three 
heads in which we have arranged the second TT 

Henry s 

portion of the reign, must be summed up French 
very briefly, for they are in themselves the 
least important part of his history. 

Of all the possessions of Henry II. only Aquitaine 
and Gascony remained to John at the time of his death ; 
and these remained, not because they loved the Planta- 
genets, for they hated them, but because they hated all 
government, and found that distant England was a less 
vigorous mistress than nearer France. So, as they had 
opposed Henry II., they resisted Philip and Lewis; and 
they continued subject to the English kings until the 
reign of Henry VI., but shorn of their proportions. 
Henry III. in his early years entertained some idea of 
reclaiming all. In 1225 Richard of Cornwall was sent 
to Bourdeaux, and re-established order in Gascony ; in 
1229, during the minority of Lewis IX., not only Gas- 
cons but Normans proposed to Henry the restoration 
of the Continental dominions of his house ; and in 1230 
he actually went across by Brittany and Anjou and re- 
ceived the homage of Poictou, whilst the Earl of Chester 
made an attempt on Normandy. But in the following 
year a truce was made, and no more is said of a French 
war for twelve years. In 1242, however, at the invitation 



1 83 - The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1254. 

of the Poictevins, over whom Lewis had set his brother 
Alfonso as count, Henry made a great expedition, which 
he managed with so little felicity that he owed his escape 
from captivity to the mercy of his enemy, just as he owed 
his continued possession of Gascony to that enemy's 
good faith. After his return home in 1243 the only for- 
eign difficulties which occurred for several years arose 
from the conduct of the Gascons, who, finding no pres- 
sure put upon them by Lewis, took courage to rebel on 
their own account, and required constant chastisement. 
From 1249 onwards Simon de Montfort was employed 
to keep them in order; and whilst his demands for 
money were one cause of Henry's difficulties at home, 
Henry's treatment of him laid the foundation of a last- 
ing enmity. The complaints of the Gascons against his 
severe administration were readily listened to, and Simon 
was easily convinced that his employment in France was 
a mere expedient for securing his ruin. In 1253 he re- 
signed his command, and Henry for the third time went 
in person to France, where he stayed for a year arid a 
half, returning at the end of 1254 more hopelessly in 
debt than ever. 

From this point the accumulating grievances of the 
nation, whether constitutional, religious, or political, 
blend in one mass ; all the oppressed and offended make 
common cause. Extortion, faithlessness, improvidence, 
impotence at home and abroad, compel and suggest 
their own remedy ; and every class having been insulted 
or oppressed, the time and the men for reform and 
revenge are not wanting. 



C H. ix. Simon de Montfort. 189 



CHAPTER IX. 

SIMON DE MONTFORT. 

Delay of the crisis— Simon de Montfort— Parliament of 1258— 
Provisions of Oxford— Political troubles— Award of St. Lewis- 
Battle of Lewes— Baronial government— Battle of Evesham — 
Closing years. 
The long and dreary survey of the first forty years of 
Henry's reign has its chief use in enabling us to trace 
the string of events, the accumulation of causes and 
motives, which produced the more striking complications 
of the remaining sixteen years. We have why ^ con _ 

seen that on the one hand a gradually in- stitutional . 

. , crisis was de- 

creasing spirit of resistance was being roused i aye d. 

among all classes of the people. Through 
a shifty, shuffling, purposeless public policy on the king's 
part, a sullen determination to reign as despotically as 
his father had done constantly makes itself apparent. 
The papal influence, too, by which his foreign policy 
was guided, was gradually bringing him up to a point at 
which the national spirit would no longer endure him. 
We cannot fail to perceive further that Henry's deter- 
mination to act as his own minister could have but one 
result -that, when the time for account came, the ac- 
count would be demanded of him himself personally ; 
he would have no agents behind whom he could screen 
himself, or whom he could sacrifice to justify himself. 
Henry's personal character, his pliancy and want of 
principle, may perhaps have helped to put off the day 
of account, so long delayed, and it may have been his 
own misfortune that he lived so long to try the patience 
of the people. Another reason for their endurance was 



190 The Early Plantagenets. ch. ix. 

no doubt the want of a leader, and that was a potent 
reason. In the early difficulties of the reign the place 
of the leader of constitutional opposition was occasion- 
ally taken by the Earl of Chester, a man in whose con- 
duct the desire of rule was stronger than the love of 
liberty ; and after his death it was occupied with higher 
principles and nobler purposes by the Earl Marshall 
Richard. After Richard's death no great lay baron for 
a long time stood out from the rest as a leader. The 
bishops proclaimed their grievances and the oppressions 
of the court, but the bishops were forbidden by their 
order to take up arms against the king. The great earl- 
doms of the former age were extinct in spirit if not in 
title, and possibly the king may have found means to 
keep their modern representatives silent or inactive. 
The great earldom of Leicester had been 

Henry s . . 

dynastic split in two, and one half, which bore the 

po l y " name of Leicester, was, at the beginning of 

the reign, in the king's hands, although claimed by the 
Montforts. The earldom of Chester came, on the ex- 
tinction of the heirs, to the crown in 1237 ; Essex and 
Hereford were held by one family ; Cornwall by the 
king's brother ; Salisbury by his cousin. Gloucester 
alone retained anything like its old importance, and the 
Earl of Gloucester could not stand alone. Henry was 
wise enough to see this, and so avoided the restoration 
of Chester by keeping it as a provision for one of his 
sons. It was probably with the like object that he con- 
nived at the marriage of his sister with Simon de Mont- 
fort, to whom the Leicester inheritance must in the end 
come ; and when the earldom of the Marshalls es- 
cheated he gave it to his half-brother. If all the great 
earldoms could be comfortably distributed among his 
near kinsmen the baronial party would be without its 



ch. ix. Simon de Mo?itfort. 191 

natural head, and might lie at his mercy. That this was 
a part of his plan we may infer from his treatment of 
the bishoprics. He no doubt thought that he had a safe 
hold on the clergy when his wife's uncle was made arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, his half-brother, Ethelmer of Lu- 
signan, bishop of Winchester, and another important 
bishopric, that of Hereford, was in the hands of a Pro- 
vencal kinsman. Edward III., a hundred years after 
him, adopted somewhat the same plan of consolidating 
family power by marrying his sons to the heiresses of 
the earldoms ; and at an earlier period in the history of 
the empire the German duchies more than once take the 
form of a compact family party. Unfortunately, how- 
ever, the plan has seldom answered : people can hate 
their relations perhaps more cordially than they can hate 
any one else ; and in a generation or two, when personal 
hatred is complicated with the rights of inheritance, wars 
between cousins are apt to become internecine. Even 
in the present reign we shall come upon one or two in- 
stances of this. One effect of this statecraft on Henry's 
part was to keep the constitutional party divided and 
headless ; another was to provoke opposition amongst 
those in whom he might otherwise have trusted. His 
treatment of the Gascons was such as at one period to 
throw even his son Edward and his brother Richard into 
opposition ; and as early as 1242 we have seen Earl 
Richard of Cornwall taking an important place in the 
baronial councils ; but the leading and crowning in- 
stance is Simon de Montfort, the personal enemy, the 
leader of constitutional opposition, the national cham- 
pion, whom Henry raised up for his own discomfiture as 
directly and as persistently as if he had had from the 
beginning that object in view. 

The opinions of historians have differed widely in 



192 The Early Plantagenets. ch. ix 

drawing the characters of the two most influential 
men of this period. Richard, King of the 
Richard of Romans, a dignity which he attained in 
1257, the second son of John, must have 
been on any showing a man of more energy and enter- 
prise than his brother Henry ; it is attested by his early 
achievements in war, by his crusade, and by the adven- 
turous way in which he attempted and really maintained 
his hold on Germany. He was also a better manager ; 
for whilst Henry was always hopelessly overwhelmed 
with debt, Richard was always amply provided with 
money, and able to lend his brother large sums, which 
kept him afloat for a time, but did not get him out of his 
difficulties. Richard had also much sounder ideas of 
policy, acting frequently with the baronial party, resist- 
ing and remonstrating against his brother's foolish de- 
signs, and winning throughout both France and Eng- 
land no small reputation for political sagacity. In oppo- 
sition to these favorable points must be set a strong 
public opinion existing at the time, and since constantly 
re-echoed both in England and in Germany. The Eng- 
lish, disliking his attempts at foreign sovereignty, repre- 
sented him as a foolish, extravagant, tricky man, who 
for the name of Emperor sacrificed his real interests and 
imperilled the interests of his country ; a man who 
would let the Germans delude him out of all his treasure 
and then come back to England and take the unpopular 
side, as he did in the barons' war. The Germans, who 
always treated the English kings as rich fools to be hand- 
led from time to time for their own profit, got out of him 
all they could in the way of money and privileges, and 
showed their gratitude by mocking him. A more care- 
ful view of his career leads to the conclusion that both 
his abilities and his success were underrated. He was 



ch. ix. Simon de Montfort. 193 

certainly not a great sovereign, but the probability is 
that, with the chances he had, he might have done very 
much worse. He was one of the very last of the kings 
of the Romans who thought of building up the empire 
as distinct from their own dynastic power ; who lavished 
what he had upon it instead of merely using the power 
and dignity which it gave him to increase the wealth of 
his own family. In respect to his conduct as an English 
earl we find him always acting as a mediator and arbi- 
trator, never urging the king to his despotic and deceit- 
ful courses. If when the country was actually at war he 
threw in his lot with his brother, rather than with Simon 
de Montfort, whom he did not understand, but suspected 
and reasonably disliked, he can hardly be visited with 
severe blame. He was the wisest and most moderate, 
it would seem, of Henry's advisers ; but Henry was not 
fond of being advised. 

Simon de Montfort was a very different man, and very 
different estimates have been formed of him. On one 
side he is regarded as an almost inspired Simon de 

statesman, a scholar, a saint, a martyr ; on Montfort. 

the other he is a mere adventurer, a demagogue, a man 
full of selfish ambitions and personal hatreds, a rebel,- a 
traitor, a criminal. A short notice of his chief actions 
may indicate what reason there is for either, neither, or 
both of these estimates. Simon de Montfort was no 
doubt an adventurer, descended from a race of counts 
that had played for high stakes with very little capital, 
and had been persistently pushing into power for some 
centuries. His father was the scarcely less renowned 
Simon de Montfort, the persecutor of the Albigensian 
heretics, who had, at the head of that cruel crusade, 
been made Count of Toulouse, and perished in making 
good his claims. The Counts of Evreux, his remoter 



194 The Early Plantagenets. ch. ix. 

ancestors, had made their way into that position by a 
fortunate marriage as early as the time of Henry I. 
They had made a bold attempt in the time of Lewis VI. 
to claim the high stewardship of France ; in later times 
one of the family had held, in the right of his wife, the 
earldom of Gloucester after the death of Geoffrey de 
Mandeville and Hawisia. Earl Simon, the Crusader, 
was a nephew of the last Earl of Leicester of the house 
of Beaumont, on whose death John divided his earldom 
into two, that of Winchester going to Saer de Quincy as 
co-heir, and that of Leicester to Simon de Montfort. 
But that Simon, although he was Earl of Leicester, had 
little to do with England ; he was an enemy of John, 
and the barons are said, at one time, to have thought 
of calling him in as a deliverer. His crusade against 
the Albigenses was directed really against Raymond of 
Toulouse, who was John's brother-in-law ; and as John 
was never loth to keep the lands of his enemies in his 
own hands, the revenues of the earldom seldom found 
their way into the treasury of the Montforts. This Simon 
had four sons ; Amalric, Count of Montfort, was the 
eldest, and the second Simon, the hero of the barons' 
war, was the youngest. Amalric, of course, was his fa- 
ther's heir, but he contented himself with his patrimony 
in France ; and the two intermediate brothers being now 
dead, Simon, according to Matthew Paris, attempted, at 
the Council of Bourges, in 1226 or 1227, to recover the 
county of Toulouse. Failing to do this, he came to Eng- 
land to see whether he could not get the earldom of 
Leicester, and his brother consented to make over to 
him such rights in it as he possessed. After some years 
he succeeded. Henry allowed the arrangement between 
the brothers to take effect, and gave Simon the honor of- 
Leicester. He had already failed in two attempts to 



ch. ix. Simon de Montfort. 195 

make himself a great position by marriage with the 
countesses of Flanders and Boulogne. In a third he 
was more successful ; Henry connived, as it was said, 
at a clandestine marriage between Simon and his sister 
Eleanor, the widow of the second William Marshall — an 
unlawful marriage, as she had taken a vow of widow- 
hood — and soon after, in 1239, gave him the title of Earl. 
Richard of Cornwall, and others of the baronage were 
exceedingly angry at this, and Henry himself in no long 
time quarrelled with his new brother-in-law, who had to 
leave England, and had some expense and trouble in 
obtaining the recognition of his marriage as lawful. 

For some years he appears to have been coolly treated, 
and perhaps nursed his wrongs. But up to this time 
there is little about him to distinguish him from the other 
foreigners with whom England swarmed. By what pro- 
cess he educated himself into the ideas and position of 
an English baron, we have but little information to show. 
It is clear, however, that he did so ; that he had much 
intercourse with the clergy, especially with that section 
which, with Bishop Grosseteste, was bent on resisting 
the royal exactions and papal usurpations ; that he de- 
voted much thought and care to the education of his 
children; and that when, in the parliament of 1244, the 
prelates and barons selected a committee to treat with 
the king, his name, with that of Earl Richard of Corn- 
wall, was among the first chosen. In his own earl- 
dom, nearly the only notice found of him, is that he 
persecuted the Jews of Leicester, and this slight indi- 
cation may show that he had somewhat of his father's 
spirit- that some persecuting zeal was an ingredient in 
his peculiar form of piety. From this date we find him, 
however, employed more and more in public business, 
and for several years together commanding in Gascony, 



196 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1257. 

where the complaints of his severity and impolicy were 
probably occasioned as much by Henry's deceitful treat- 
ment of his foreign adherents, as by Simon's own fault. 
Of this, however, it is impossible to judge certainly ; we 
only know that the bitter feelings which existed between 
him and the king were constantly more and more em- 
bittered, and that Earl Richard, although sometimes he 
was obliged to take Simon's part, had the same personal 
antipathy, which grew greater, and produced terrible 
results in the next generation. In Gascony, however, 
Simon must have gained a good deal of political experi- 
ence ; and he was already by inherited talent and early 
training, a highly accomplished soldier and tactician. 

Such was the man whom Henry III. had raised and 
trained to his own confusion ; a brilliant, religious, en- 
terprising, experienced man, who had cultivated popu- 
larity ; and who, although a foreigner, an adventurer, a 
man descended from high feudal parentage, and an 
adept in all the lessons of feudal insubordination, had 
yet fitted himself to be a leader of the English baronage 
in a crusade against tyranny. Earl Simon's greatness 
throws all the other actors into the shade, for Bishop 
Grosseteste, who if he had lived, would no doubt have 
taken a great place in the story, died in 1253; and of the 
other prelates, besides Archbishop Boniface, the only 
one of much personal eminence at the time, was Walter 
of Cantilupe, Bishop of Worcester. Of the barons, the 
most eminent were Richard de Clare, Earl of Gloucester, 
and William of Ferrers, the last Earl of Derby of that 
house which had been engaged in every conspiracy and 
intrigue since the days of Stephen. 

The struggle opens at the parliament held at Mid- 
lent at Westminster, in 1257, when the king presented 
his son Edmund to the barons as king of Sicily, 



A. d . 1257. Simon de Montfort. 1 97 

and announced that he had pledged the kingdom 
to the Pope for 140,000 marks. He demanded an aid, 
a tenth of all church- revenue, and the income of all 
vacant benefices for five years The clergy remon- 
strated. The ears of all tingled, says the historian, 
and their hearts died within them, but he succeeded 
in obtaining 52,000 marks, and was encouraged to try 
again. This he did the next year, 1258, at 
a parliament held soon after Easter at * f a £*£ ent 
London. This assembly met on April 
9, and continued until May 5. Every one brought up 
his grievances ; the king insisted on having money. The 
Pope had pledged himself to the merchants, Henry had 
pledged himself to the Pope ; was all Christendom to be 
bankrupt? The barons listened with impatience; at 
last the time was come for reform, and the king was 
obliged to yield. On May 2 he consented that a parlia- 
ment should be called at Oxford within a month after 
Whitsuntide, and that then and there a commission of 
twenty-four persons should be constituted, twelve mem- 
bers of the royal council already chosen and twelve elect- 
ed by the barons ; then if the barons would do their best 
to get the king out of his difficulties by a pecuniary aid, 
he would, with the advice of these twenty-four, draw up 
measures for the reform of the state of the kingdom, the 
royal household and the Church. It will be remembered 
that in 121 5 the execution of the articles of Magna Carta 
was committed to twenty-five barons, with power to con- 
strain the king to make the necessary reforms ; in this 
case the arrangement is somewhat different, although 
the method of proceeding is not quite dissimilar, and 
both alike afforded precedents for that superseding of the 
royal authority by a commission of government which we 
find in the reigns of Edward II. and Richard II. 



198 The Early Plant agenets. a. d. 1258. 

At Oxford the parliament met on June 11, and the 
barons presented a long list of grievances which they 

insisted should be reformed. If this list 
a^Oxford* ^e com P are d with the list of grievances 

on which Magna Carta was drawn up, 
it will be found that many points are common to 
the two documents. We may thus infer that not- 
withstanding the constant confirmations of the char- 
ters which were issued by the king, the observ- 
ance of them was evaded by violence or by chica- 
nery ; that the king enforced some of the most offensive 
feudal rights, and that his officers found little check on 
their exactions. Castles had been multiplied, the itinerant 
judges had made use of their office to exact large sums 
in the shape of fines, and the sheriffs had oppressed the 
country in the same way. English fortresses had been 
placed in the hands of foreigners, and the forest laws 
had been disregarded. A great number of other evil 
customs are now recounted. But, strange to say, there 
is no proposal to restore the missing articles of the Char- 
ter of Runnymede, by which taxation without the con- 
sent of the national council is forbidden. 

These grievances were to be redressed before the end 
of the year ; and the aliens were to be removed at once 
from all places of trust. But this was not the most crit- 
ical part of the business. The Provisions of Oxford, as 
they were called, were intended to be much more than 

an enforcement of Magna Carta ; a body of 
Provisions of twenty-four was chosen, twelve by the king, 

twelve by the earls and barons, to reform 
the grievances ; of the king's twelve the most eminent 
were his three half-brothers, the Lusignans, his nephew 
Henry of Cornwall, and the Earls of Warenne and 
Warwick ; of the baronial twelve the chief were the 



a.d. 1258. Simon de Montf or t. 199 

Bishop of Worcester, the Earls of Leicester, Gloucester, 
and Hereford, Roger Mortimer, Hugh Bigot, and Hugh 
le Despenser. A next step was to restore the three 
great dignities of the administration which had been so 
long in abeyance ; Hugh Bigot was made justiciar, but 
the great seal still remained in the hands of a keeper 
who must be supposed to have taken the oath of chan- 
cellor. The king was then provided with a council of 
fifteen advisers ; each of the two twelves selected two 
out of the other twelve, and these four nominated the 
fifteen, subject to the approval of the whole twenty-four. 
The chiefs of this permanent council were the Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Worcester, and the 
Earls of Gloucester, and Leicester. The fifteen were to 
hold three annual sessions, or parliaments, in February, 
June, and October ; and with them the barons were to 
negotiate through another committee of twelve. There 
was another body still, also consisting of twenty-four 
members, who had the special task of negotiating the 
financial aids ; and the original twenty-four were em- 
powered to undertake the reform of the Church. Of 
course these several committees contained very much 
the same elements, the Earls of Leicester, Gloucester, 
and Norfolk, Roger Mortimer, and others being elected 
to each. It was a cumbrous arrangement, and scarcely 
likely to be permanent, but was accepted with great 
solemnity. Everybody was sworn to obey, and several 
minor measures were ordered to give security to the new 
constitution. It is this framework of government, the 
permanent council of fifteen, the three annual parlia- 
ments, the representation of the community of the 
realm through twelve representative barons, that is his- 
torically known as the Constitution of the Provisions of 
Oxford. Henry was again and again forced to swear to 



200 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1263, 

it, and to proclaim it throughout the country. The 
grievances of the barons were met by a set of ordi- 
nances called the Provisions of Westminster, which 
were produced after some trouble in October 1259. Be- 
fore the scheme had begun to work the foreign favor- 
ites and kinsmen fled from the court and were allowed 
to quit the country with some scanty remnant of their 
ill-gotten gains. Their departure left the royalist mem- 
bers of the new administration in a hopeless minority. 

England had now, it would appear, adopted a new 
form of government, but it must have been already suf- 
' . ficiently clear that so many rival interests 

Disunion ... - 

among the and ambitious leaders would not work to- 
gether, that Henry would avail himself of 
the first pretext for repudiating his promises, and that a 
civil war would almost certainly follow. The first year 
of this provisional government passed away quietly. 
The King of the Romans, who returned from Germany 
in January, 1259, was obliged to swear to the provisions. 
In November Henry went to France, returning in April, 

1260. Immediately on his return he began to intrigue 
for the overthrow of the government, sent for absolution 
to Rome, and prepared for war. Edward, his eldest son, 
tried to prevent him from breaking his word, but before 
the king had begun the contest the two great earls had 
quarrelled ; Gloucester could not bear Leicester, Leices- 
ter could not bear a rival. A general reconciliation was 
the prelude as usual to a general struggle. In February, 

1 261, Henry repudiated his oath, and seized the Tower. 
In June he produced a papal Bull which absolved him 
from his oath to observe the Provisions. The chiefs of 
the government, Leicester and Gloucester, took up arms, 
but they avoided a battle. The summer was occupied 
with preparations for a struggle, and peace was made 



ad. 1263. Simon de Montfort. 201 

in the winter. In 1262 Henry went again to France for 
six months, and on his return again swore to the Provi- 
sions ; that year the Earl of Gloucester died, and Edwaid 
began to draw nearer to his father. Simon was without 
a rival, and no doubt created in Edward that spirit of 
jealous mistrust which never again left him. The next 
year was one of open war. The young Earl 
of Gloucester refused to swear allegiance to wS.^aS 1 ^' 
Edward ; Simon insisted that the pertina- 
cious aliens should be again expelled. Twice if not 
three times in this year Henry was forced to confirm the 
Provisions ; but Edward saw that they had now become 
a mere form under which the sovereignty of Simon de 
Montfort was scarcely hidden ; and the increasing con- 
viction of this induced the barons to refer the whole ques- 
tion to the arbitration of Lewis IX. of France. 
This was done on December 16, 1263. An t7wL IX. 
examination of the names of the barons 
which appear in the two lists of sureties who undertake 
the carrying out of this arbitration, shows that Simon de 
Montfort had now lost some of his most important allies. 
The young Earl of Gloucester appears in neither list, 
but the Earls of Norfolk and Hereford, Hugh Bigot, and 
Roger Mortimer are now on the king's side, and no earl 
except Leicester himself appears in the baronial party, 
the foremost layman there being Hugh le Despenser, the 
justiciar. There can be no doubt that since the out- 
break of the war much moral weight had fallen to 
the royalists, and it seems most probable that Earl 
Simon had rather offended than propitiated the men 
v/ho regarded themselves as his equals. The conduct 
of the barons after the award of Lewis IX. seems to place 
them in the wrong, and to show either that Simon de 
Montfort's views had developed, under the late changes, 

o 



202 The Early Plantagenets.- a.d. 1263. 

in the direction of personal ambition and selfish ends, 
or that other causes were at work, of which we have no 
information. The barons were so distinctly justified in 
their first proceedings, that an equitable consideration 
cannot be refused to their later difficulties. Both par- 
ties, however, equally bound themselves to abide by the 
arbitration. 

Henry took the wise course of being personally pre- 
sent on the occasion and taking his son Edward with 
him. Some of the barons also appeared in person, but 
not the Earl of Leicester, who was supporting the Welsh 
princes in their war with Mortimer, a method of con- 
tinuing the struggle which was neither honest nor pa- 
triotic. At Amiens Lewis heard the cause, and did not 
long hesitate about his answer, which was delivered on 
January 23, 1264. By this award the King of France 
entirely annulled the Provisions of Oxford, and all en- 
gagements which had been made respecting them. Not 
content with doing this in general terms, he forbade the 
making of new statutes, as proposed and carried out in 
the Provisions of Westminster, ordered the restoration 
of the royal castles to the king, restored to him the 
power of nominating the officers of state and the sheriffs, 
the nomination of whom had been withdrawn from him 
by the Provisions of Oxford ; he annulled the order that 
natives of England alone should govern the realm of 
England, and added that the king should have full and 
free power in this kingdom as he had had in time past. 
All this was in the king's favor. The arbitrator, how- 
ever, added that all the charters issued before the time 
of the Provisions should hold good, and that all parties 
should condone enmities and injuries arising from the 
late troubles. 

Lrwis mentions as his chief motive for thus £ivin£ 



A.d. 1263. Simon de Montfort. 203 

the verdict practically in the king's favor, the fact that 
the Provisions had already been annulled 
by the Pope, and the parties bound by them t he decision 
released from their oaths. But we cannot French king 
suppose that he was entirely guided by this 
consideration ; it is probable that he did not understand 
the limits which the growth of constitutional life had 
put upon the exercise of royal power as early as Magna 
Carta, or the shameless way in which Henry had broken 
his engagements. He may, very reasonably, have re- 
garded England as much the same sort of country as his 
own, and have seen in the strengthening of the royal 
power — a thing absolutely necessary in France at the 
time — a measure as necessary for England. He may 
have been moved by Henry's own pleadings, or by the 
more weighty if more moderate statements which we can 
imagine were laid before him, by Edward. And the 
care that he shows for the restoration of peace and good 
feeling, may well be interpreted to prove that, although 
his award was more favorable to the one party than to 
the other, he yet did not think the defeated party entirely 
jn the wrong. 

The award, however, was entirely in favor of the 
crown. The new form of government was already giving 
way, and both parties might have and ought 
to have submitted to the sentence. Henry the award 
had had a severe lesson, and might not of- of Lewis, 
fend again ; the baronage had had their chance, and had 
been found wanting both in unity of aim and in admin- 
istrative power. Neither party, however, acquiesced in 
the admonition, and each of course laid on the other the 
blame of disregarding a judgment by which both had 
sworn to stand. At first the war was continued on the 
Welsh marches principally; Edward's forces assisting 



204 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1264. 

Mortimer, and Montfort continuing to support Llewelyn, 
the Prince of Wales, his opponent. But when the king 
returned from France, as he did in February, the strug- 
gle became general. 

The responsibility of this rests unquestionably with 
Simon de Montfort; how far he was justified by the 
greatness of the necessity, is another ques- 
successesof tion. He had the sympathy of the Lon- 
of Simonde doners, which was probably shared by the 
Montfort. burghers of the great towns, that of the 

clergy, except those who were led by the Pope entirely, 
of the universities, and of the great body of the people. 
The barons by themselves would have treated with the 
king; they would probably have thrown over Earl Simon, 
if only they could have got rid of the foreigners, and had 
England for the English. On March 31, however, whilst 
negotiations were proceeding, the Londoners broke into 
riot against the king, and he in his anger put an end 
to the consultation. The war began favorably for the 
king; Northampton was taken, Nottingham opened her 
gates, and Tutbury, the castle of the Ferrers, surrendered 
to Edward. Earl Simon had his successes too, and cap- 
tured Warwick. Both parties then turned southwards. 
Earl Simon besieged Rochester, the king marched to 
relieve it. Henry also took Tunbridge, the Earl of 
Gloucester's castle, for the young Earl of Gloucester was 
now on the barons' side ; then he collected his forces at 
Lewes, where he arrived in the first week of May. 

Lewes castle belonged to the Earl of Warenne, who 
had throughout stood on the king's side. The barons 
also collected their host in the immediate neighborhood ; 
but before fighting they made one bid for peace. The 
two bishops who were the chief political advisers of the 
barons — the Bishops of Worcester and London — brought 



A.D. 1264. Simon de Montfort. 205 

the proposition to the king ; they would give 
50,000 marks in payment for damages done Lewes. ° 
in the late struggle, if he would confirm the t heBarons 
Provisions of Oxford. The offer was sealed 
by the Earls of Leicester and Gloucester, and dated on 
May 13. The king returned an answer of defiance, 
which was accompanied by a formal challenge on the 
part of the King of the Romans, Edward, and the rest 
of the royalist barons. No time was lost ; on the very 
next day the battle was fought, and fortune declared 
against the king. He had the larger force, but all the 
skill, care, and earnestness was on the side of the barons. 
Simon, who had broken his leg a few months before — an 
accident which prevented him from going to meet the 
King of France at Amiens — had been obliged to use a 
carriage during the late marches ; he now posted his 
carriage in a conspicuous place, and himself went else- 
where. Edward, thinking that if he could capture the 
earl, the struggle would be over, attacked the post where 
the carriage was seen, routed and pursued the defend- 
ers, and going too far in pursuit, left his father exposed 
to the attack of the earl. King Henry was a brave man, 
but of course no general, for he had never seen anything 
like real war before. He defended himself stoutly ; two 
horses were killed under him, and he was wounded and 
bruised by the swords and maces of his adversaries, who 
were in close hand-to hand combat. When he had lost 
most of his immediate retainers, he retreated into the 
priory of Lewes. The King of the Romans, who had 
commanded the centre of the royal army, was already 
compelled to retreat, and, whilst Henry was still strug- 
gling, had been taken captive in a windmill, which made 
the adversaries very merry. A general rout followed. 
The baronial party was victorious long before Edward 



206 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1264. 

returned from his unfortunate pursuit, and many of the 
king's most powerful friends secured themselves by- 
flight. The next day an arbitration was determined on, 
called the Mise of Lewes, and the king gave himself and 
his son into the hands of Simon, who, from that time to 
the end of the struggle in the next year, ruled in the 
king's name. 

The Mise of Lewes contained seven articles, the most 
important of which prescribed the employment of native 
counsellors, and bound the king to act by 
Lew^ 6 ° f ^e- advice of the council which would be 
provided for him. Measures were also 
taken for obtaining a new arbitration. Thus England 
for the second time within seven years passed under a 
new constitution. The system devised at the Council of 
Oxford in 1258 was not revived, but a parliament was 
called for June 22, to devise or ratify a new scheme. 
This assembly comprised four knights from each shire, 
as well as the ordinary elements, the bishops and ab- 
bots, earls and barons, who formed the usual parliament. 
In it the new form of government was drawn up. This 
time the king was bound to act by the advice of nine 
counsellors. Three electors or nominators were first to 
be chosen— whether by the whole body of the parlia- 
ment or by the barons only, it is not said ; and these 
three were to name the nine. Of the nine three were to 
be in constant attendance on the king, and his sovereign 
authority was, in fact, to be exercised by and through 
them. They were to nominate the great functionaries 
of the state and the other ministers whose appointment 
had before rested with the king, and their authority was 
to last until all the points of controversy were settled by 
the arbitration provided in the Mise of Lewes. The 
three electors chosen were the Earls of Leicester and 



a.d. 1265. Simon de Mohtfort. 207 

Gloucester and the Bishop of Chichester, Stephen Berk- 
sted, a man who comes into prominence now for the 
first time, but who was probably the agent of the con- 
stitutional party among the clergy, which had been 
hitherto represented by the Bishop of Worcester. 

These men governed England until the battle of Eve- 
sham. But their reign was not an easy or peaceful one. 
The Pope was still zealous for Henry, and 
left no means untried by which the bishops the new Gov- 
might be detached from the barons. The 
queen collected a great army in France and prepared to 
invade England, assisted by the Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, her uncle, and all the English refugees who had 
come under the rod of Earl Simon. Mortimer also 
made an attempt to prolong the state of war on the 
border. Nothing, however, came of these preparations 
during this year : the new government professed itself 
to be provisional, and negotiations were resumed, by 
which the king of France, now better informed, was to 
settle all controversies. In December a summons went 
forth for a new parliament. 

This is the famous parliament, as it is called, of 
Simon de Montfort, the first assembly of the sort to 
which representatives of the borough towns 
were called ; and thus to some extent forms ment ofSimon 
a landmark in English history. It was not 
made a precedent, and in fact it is not till thirty years 
after that the representatives of the towns begin regu- 
larly to sit in parliament ; but it is nevertheless a very 
notable date. Nor was the assembly itself what would 
be called a full and free pailiament, only those persons 
being summoned who were favorable to the new regime; 
but five earls and eighteen barons, and an overwhelm- 
ing number of the lower clergy, knights, and burghers, 



208 The Early Plantagenets. A, D. 1265. 

who were of course supporters of Earl Simon. It met 
on January, 20, 1265, and did not effect much. Ed- 
ward, however, was allowed to make terms for his lib- 
eration, and Simon secured for himself and his family 
the earldom of Chester, giving up to Edward, however, 
other estates by way of exchange. The liberation of 
Edward, who was released on the condition of sur- 
rendering his castles, staying for three years in England 
and keeping the peace, led immediately to the earl's 
overthrow. Edward was to live under surveillance at 
Hereford — far too near the Mortimers and the Welsh 
border. This was carried out ; Edward was liberated 
on March 10. 

Already, however, dissensions were springing up. 
Earl Simon's sons, who did very little credit to his in- 
structions, and on whom perhaps some of 

Impolicy of . 

Earl Simon's the blame may rest of which otherwise it is 
impossible to acquit their father, managed 
to offend the Earl of Gloucester. They challenged the 
Clares to a tournament at Dunstable. When they were 
ready and already angry and prepared to turn the fes- 
tive meeting into a battle, it was suddenly stopped by 
the king or by Earl Simon, acting in his name. Glou- 
cester and his kinsmen deemed themselves insulted, and 
immediately began to negotiate with the Mortimers ; 
and, when hostilities were just beginning, Edward es- 
caped from his honorable keeping at Hereford and 
joined the party. 

From this point action is rapid. Simon, with the king 
in his train, marched into the West, and advanced into 
_ -, rr . South Wales. Edward and Gloucester, 

Battle of Eve- . 

sham. Death joined by Mortimer, mustered their adher- 
ents in the Cheshire and Shropshire country, 
and then rushed down by way of Worcester on the town 



A.D. 1265. Simon de Montfori. 209 

of Gloucester, which surrendered on June, 29, thus cut- 
ting off the earl's return to England. The younger 
Simon de Montfort, the earl's second son, was sum- 
moned to his father's aid, came up from Pevensey, 
which he was besieging, plundered Winchester, and 
took up his position at Kenilworth. His father mean- 
time had got back to Hereford and formed a plan for 
surrounding Edward. Edward, however, had now 
learned vigilance and caution. He took the initiative, 
succeeded in routing the young Simon and nearly cap- 
turing Kenilworth, and thus turned the tables on the 
earl. Simon marched on to Evesham, expecting to 
meet his son ; instead of his son he met his nephew ; 
and on August 4, the battle fought there reversed the 
judgment of Lewes. There the great earl fell, and with 
him Hugh le Despenser, the baron's justiciar, fighting 
bravely, but without much hope. 

The interest of the reign, and indeed its importance, 
ends here. Simon is the hero of the latter part of it, 
and the death of Simon closes it, although 
the king reigns for seven years longer. Kenilworth 
The war does not end here : the remnant of 
the baronial party held out at Kenilworth until October, 
1266. There the last supporters of Earl Simon, the men 
whose attitude towards Henry was unpardonable, had 
made their stand. The final agreement which was 
drawn up at the siege, and which is called the Dictum 
de Kenilworth, was intended to settle all differences, and 
for the most part it did so, by allowing those who had 
incurred the penalty of forfeiture to redeem their pos- 
sessions by fines. But until the end of 1267 there were 
constant outbreaks. The Isle of Ely was made the ref- 
uge of one set, just as it had been two hundred years 
before, in the time of the Conqueror. The Earl of 



210 The Early Planiagenets. a.d, 126S-72. 

Gloucester raised the banner of revolt, declaring that 
the king was dealing too hardly with the victims, and 
the Londoners were very loth indeed to lose the power 
and advantages which they had secured by their alli- 
ance with Simon. But gradually all the storm sub- 
sided. In the parliament of Marlborough, in Novem- 
ber, 1267, the King renewed the Provisions of West- 
minster of 1259, by which the most valuable legal re- 
forms of the constitutional party became embodied in 
statutes In 1268 the papal legate held a council for the 
permanent maintenance of peace, and Edward, with 
many of the leading nobles, took the Cross. In 1270, 
they went on Crusade, and the Londoners were restored 
to favor. In December, 1271 the King of the Romans 
died, broken-hearted at the loss of his son Henry, who 
was murdered by the Montforts at Viterbo. In 1272, on 
November 16, Henry III., died ; and so completely was 
the kingdom then at peace, that Edward, 
H G nr h III although far away from England, was at 

once proclaimed king, and oaths of fealty 
were taken to him in his absence. 

The long struggle had not yet come to an end : more 
than twenty years were yet to elapse before Edward I. 
recognized the fundamental justice of the 
Suggle claims of his subjects, and admitted all the 

continued. estates to that full and equal share in the ac- 
tion of the country which lies at the basis of 
our national constitution. We may perhaps ask whether 
Simon de Montfort deserves that character of a hero, the 
hero of mediaeval history, which is commonly attribu- 
ted to him. We can only attempt to realize the motives 
that swayed him. There is no doubt that he was a 
great man, a much greater man as he was a much better 
and wiser man than Henry, and perhaps better, cer- 



a . d . 1272. Simon de Montfort. 2 1 1 

tainly wiser and greater, than such men as Gloucester. 
But that he was absolutely a patriot, or absolutely wise 
and good, it is needless to affirm and impossible to 
prove ; nor is it necessary that in attempting to estimate 
his personal eminence we are to look at him through the 
medium of his political glories. There is no question 
that the objects which were aimed at by the baronial 
policy were necessary, and the attainment of them, when 
they were attained, was beneficial. It is possible, though 
not probable, that had Simon never existed those objects 
would never have been attained ; also it is quite possible 
that if he had not forced on rebellion the objects might 
have been attained long before they were. That we 
cannot decide. But there are three points to be con- 
sidered. Were the aims of the barons beneficial ? Was 
Simon a great and good man ? Were all the motives of 
his party and the means taken to realize them good and 
justifiable ? To the first two questions unhesitatingly 
we may answer, yes. The barons wanted only what was 
fair. Simon de Montfort was a great and good man. 
The third question is not so easy. It is better to allow 
that there were mixed motives and unjustifiable expe- 
dients. Simon was not successful as an administrator, 
he could not maintain peace even when he had the 
whole kingdom at his feet. His expedient for governing 
was fanciful and cumbrous. His own conduct in his 
elevation was not quite free from the charge of rapacity. 
He stands out best and most grandly in comparison with 
the meanness with which he was surrounded— the paltry, 
faithless king, the selfish and unscrupulous baronage. 
He is relatively great ; but he is not perfect. He is scarce- 
ly a patriot— a foreigner could hardly be expected to be so. 
He is somewhat more distinctly a hero, but he never 
quite rids himself of the character of the adventurer. 



212 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1272. 



CHAPTER X. 

EDWARD I. 

Position and character of Edward— The Crusade — The Accession— 
The Conquest of Wales — Edward's legal reforms — Financial 
system — Growth of Parliament. 

If ever king came to his throne with a distinct under- 
standing of the work that lay before him, that king must 
have been Edward I. The lessons of the 
education of l ast fifteen years of his father's reign had 
Edward I. not b een thrown away upon him. He had 

been trained for the task of reigning, as well by his 
father's mistakes and misgovernment as by the means 
which the nation, under Earl Simon and the barons, had 
taken to remedy the evils which those mistakes and mis- 
government had produced. He must have known that 
England required sound laws and strong administration, 
an adequate organization for national defence, and ef- 
fective methods for preserving internal peace ; and the 
history of the late reign must have taught him not only 
that without the sympathy and co-operation of the nation 
at large these ends could not be secured, but that the 
nation was itself ready, educated sufficiently, and united 
sufficiently, to give the aid that he required. Earl Simon 
and his companions had perished, but the great end of 
their work had been achieved ; they had made it impos- 
sible for a king again to rule as John had ruled, and as 
Henry had tried to rule. They had drawn out a plan of 
reform in the laws which Henry himself had accepted after 
their death, although he had struggled against it and 
evaded it whilst they lived ; for most of the articles which 



A-D. 1272. Edward I. 213 

had been forced upon him at Oxford in 1258, and at 
Westminster in 1259, he had re-enacted in the great 
statute of Marlborough, in 1267. He had reformed his 
expenditure ; he had observed the constitutional rule of 
not taxing without the consent of the national council ; 
he had even on some occasions called together represen- 
tatives of the towns and counties, as Simon had done, 
although he had not so far imitated his rival as to make 
them an integral part of his Parliament. And thus the 
great contest had immediate effects even under Henry. 

Edward had learned the deeper lessons ; he had con- 
ceived the desire of satisfying the more essential needs 
of his people. Hence, perhaps, in part, his 
willingness to go on the Crusade. He knew termining 
that he had made enemies in the late war ; crusade' S 
a few years would heal up the old wounds. 
He knew that the land was exhausted ; a few years' rest 
would give it time to recruit. If he were likely to be the 
cause of unrest, he was better away ; and even if he should 
not return until he returned as king, he might begin his 
new career less hampered than he would otherwise 
have been by the policy of his father. 

But Edward was qualified to do far more than merely 
restore the strength and energy of his fainting people ; 
he was fitted to start and guide them on a 
new path of progress. He seems to have pos- English 
sessed, with his English name, the desire, policy. 
which he certainly did not inherit, of being an English 
king ; of putting himself at the head of his English people 
to make England a great power in Christendom. His aim 
no doubt was to secure that place for his descendants, not, 
as Henry II. had done it, simply by founding a great 
family inheritance of states scattered and divided, but as 
the true king of a people strong in the feeling of national 



2i4 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1272. 

unity, bound together by good laws, but more so by a 
sense of national identity, an intelligent participation in 
all national designs. The restoration of law and order, 
the determination that the English crown should be su- 
preme within the British isles, the assertion and realiza- 
tion of the idea that the king should work as the leader 
and spokesman of a nation that could enter into his plans 
and take a share of his responsibilities — these thoughts 
must have been more or less before Edward's mind from 
the beginning of his reign. Very possibly he foresaw 
little of the exact path in which he was going to walk : 
the exact points of legal reform, the opportunities for con- 
quest, the exigencies in which he would have to act for 
the execution of his great designs, no doubt broke gra- 
dually on his view as he proceeded. He had still some- 
thing to unlearn as well as something to learn. If in 
spirit he was English, he was in education and by asso- 
ciation French ; if he was to be a great national king, 
still his idea of kingship had too much of an 
ilea of S inherited form, a form which it did not surren- 

kmgship. ^ er -without a struggle. His greatness was 

not without an element which sets it far above all the 
greatness that arises from mere success ; he had it to learn, 
and he learned, to rule himself, to cast away his own 
cherished idea of reigning, and faithfully and honorably 
abide by the conditions which, although forced upon him, 
he saw at last were needed for the true realization of 
his character as a national king. He was not free from 
faults ; it is no small part of his grandeur that, in a nature 
so strong as his, and with temptations so powerful as those 
which were presented to him, those faults had so little 
sway. Of an eminently legal mind, he was too apt to 
take captious advantage of his legal position, somewhat 
prone to evade responsibilities to which the letter of the 



A.D. 1272. Edward I. 215 

law did not bind him. This weakness was the source of 
all his mistakes and the cause of all his failures ; but this 
was all. His mistakes were few, and his failures fewer 
still. Yet, as we shall see, he did not realize all that he 
hoped. Nor was his actual contribution to national pro- 
gress exactly what he designed. There are dark lines in 
his history as well as bright ones. Of his schemes some 
were too early, some too late for success ; and in some 
points he drew the outline rather than built the fabric 
that was to last. Still his reign is a great era ; he is the 
great lawgiver, the great politician, the great organizer 
of the mediaeval English polity. 

Edward was thirty-three years old at the time of his 
father's death. He had been for eighteen years a mar- 
ried man ; his wife, Eleanor of Castile, was 

1 • r Air 1 ttt" t 1 -i Crusade of 

the sister of that Alfonso the Wise who had Prince 
been the competitor of Richard of Corn- war ' 

wall for the imperial crown, a noble and faithful lady. 
He himself was a tall, strong man, an adept in all 
knightly accomplishments, brave to rashness, and now 
skilled and experienced in war. His crusade had not 
been a successful one. Late in starting, he had reached 
the African coast in the autumn of 1270, to find Lewis 
IX. dead, and the hopes of the pilgrims already waning. 
After spending the winter in Sicily, he had, in May, 
1 27 1, gone on, like Richard Cceur de Lion, to Acre, and 
had spent more than a year in an attempt to retrieve the 
fortunes of the Frank kingdom. It was quite in vain. 
Mutual jealousies and universal mistrust had eaten out 
the heart of the Crusaders. A few dashing exploits, and 
a few almost wanton inroads, could do little more than 
exasperate the hatred of the Moslem. Edward played 
his part as a knight, but he had neither force nor oppor- 
tunity to do more. Still he made himself feared ; and an 



2 1 6 The Early Plantagenets . A . d . 1 2 7 3 . 

attempt at assassination in June, 1272, warned him of 
the risks he was running. An emissary of the Sultan 
Bibars struck him in his tent. The weapon was poi- 
soned, it was said, and the story was told and believed, 
that his faithful queen, who had followed him in his pil- 
grimage, had sucked the poison from the wound. Two 
months later he sailed homewards, thoroughly disap- 
pointed, and heavily burdened with the cost of his ex- 
pedition. He was slowly proceeding on his 

Edward's \. , r+ t i 

accession to way, when, at Capua, in January, 1273, he 
the English received the news of his father's death and 

crown. 

of the death of his eldest son John, a boy 
of six. Quickening his pace, he went on at once to 
Rome, visited the Pope at Orvieto, and crossed by the 
Mont Cenis pass to Lyons ; thence to Paris, where he 
did homage to King Philip III. for his French provinces ; 
and then into Gascony, where he was delayed for an- 
other year before he could come to England to be 
crowned. 

England was still at rest. The royal dignity of Henry 
HI. passed on at once to his son. There was no formal 

interregnum such as had always occurred 
tion^ofthe" before, between the death of the old king 
kingdom an( j fae coronation of the new. Edward 

during 

Edward's wa s proclaimed without being waited for. 

3.DSGI1CC 

The king's peace was maintained by the 
royal council, and the three ministers to whom, before 
he started, he had committed the defence of his private 
interests, undertook to govern England in his stead. 
Archbishop Giffard of York, Roger Mortimer, the great 
lord of the Welsh Marches, who had helped him so 
well in 1265, and Robert Burnell, his confidential chap- 
lain, the man who was to be his prime minister during 
half his reign, acted as regents in his place, and were at 



a.d. 1274-5. Edward I. 217 

once recognised by the baronage and nation as his 
agents. Competitor there was none. Gilbert of Glou- 
cester, the brilliant and somewhat erratic earl who had 
tried to act as arbiter in the last scenes of the barons' 
war, and had lost the confidence of both parties, had 
sworn to King Henry on his death-bed that he would 
maintain the rights of Edward. He, as the first baron 
of the kingdom, took the oath of allegiance to the new 
king at his father's funeral. Early in 1273 a great as- 
sembly of all estates of the realm, an assembly not only 
of barons and prelates, but of knightly representatives 
of the shires and citizens deputed by every city, met at 
Westminster, and bound themselves by the same oath. 
One or two faint reports of local tumult served only to 
mark the profoundness of the general peace. The gov- 
ernment worked in quiet ; even money was raised with- 
out much murmuring. 

On August 2, 1274, Edward I. landed at Dover, and 
on the 19th he was crowned. At once the work of his 
reign began. He was a warrior and a law- Coronation of 
giver by nature, education, and opportunity ; Edward, 
the exigencies of the time made him a financier also ; 
and the occasion speedily arose for him to display his 
powers in each capacity. 

The princes of North Wales had long been a sharp 
thorn in the side of England. Neither force nor friend- 
ly alliance had been strong enough to keep 

i . _. , . . _ , , Turbulence of 

them quiet. The love of independence, the the Welsh 
inheritance of proud, although illusory tra- prmces - 
ditions, the attachment of an affectionate people, the 
possession of remote mountain fastnesses, the antipathy 
as strongly felt towards the Norman as it had been to- 
wards the Saxon, combined to prevent either peace or 
submission. All the other races had combined on the 



218 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1276. 

soil of Britain, the Welsh would not. The demands of 
feudal homage made by the kings of England were 
evaded or repudiated ; the intermarriages, by which 
Henry II. and John had tried to help on a national 
agreement had in every case failed. In every internal 
difficulty of English politics the Welsh princes had done 
their best to embarrass the action of the kings ; they 
had intrigued with every aspirant for power, had been 
in league with every rebel. At the beginning of the 
reign of Henry III. they had conspired with Falkes de 
Breaute against the Marshalls ; at the close of it they 
were in intimate alliance with the Montforts. Not only 
so ; the necessity of guarding the Welsh border had 
caused the English kings to found on the March a num- 
ber of feudal lordships, which were privileged to exer- 
cise almost sovereign jurisdictions, and exempted from 
the common operations of the English law. The Mor- 
timers at Chirk and Wigmore, the Bohuns at Hereford 
and Brecon, the Marshalls at Pembroke, and the Clares 
in Glamorgan, were out of the reach of the king, and 
often turned against one another the arms which had 
been given them to overawe the Welsh. There they 
had an open ground for combats which they could not 
wage where English law was strong. So long as the 
Welsh were left free to rebel the Marchers must be left 
free to fight. 

Edward had long known this. He too had been put 
in the position of a Marcher. His father had given him, 
„ , „. „ in 12154, a great territory in Wales, between 

Rebellion of _ °^\ _ 6 -J .,,,., 

Llewelyn, Dee and Conway, and into it he had tried, 

North Wales, with signal ill success, to introduce English 
David? br ° ther laws - He probably knew that one of his 
greatest tasks, when he came to the crown, 
would be this. And he had not to wait for his opportu- 



a.d. 1277-82. Edward I. 219 

nity. Llewelyn, the prince of North Wales, had, by the 
assistance given to Simon de Montfort earned as his re- 
ward a recognition of his independence, subject only to 
the ancient feudal obligations. All the advantages won 
during the early years of Henry III. had been thus sur- 
rendered. When the tide turned Llewelyn had done 
homage to Henry ; but when he was invited, in 1273, to 
perform the usual service to the new king, he refused ; 
and again, in 1274 and 1275, he evaded the royal sum- 
mons. In 1276, under the joint pressure of excommu- 
nication and a great army which Edward brought against 
him, he made a formal submission ; performed the hom- 
age, and received, as a pledge of amity the hand of 
Eleanor de Montfort in marriage. But Eleanor, although 
she was Edward's cousin, was Earl Simon's daughter, 
and scarcely qualified to be a peacemaker. Another 
adviser of rebellion was found in Llewelyn's brother 
David, who had hitherto taken part with the English, 
and had received special favors and promotion from 
Edward himself. The reconciliation of Edward and 
Llewelyn had put an end to his hopes of supplanting 
his brother, and he had drawn closer to him, in order to 
entangle him in a rebellion for which he was always 
ready. The peace made in 1277 lasted about four years. 
In 1282 the brothers rose, seized the border castles of 
Hawarden, Flint, and Rhuddlan, and captured the Jus- 
ticiar of Wales, Roger Clifford. Edward saw then that 
his time was come. He marched into North Wales, car- 
rying with him the courts of law and the exchequer, 
and transferring the seat of government for the time to 
Shrewsbury. He left nothing undone that might give 
the expedition the character of a national effort. He 
collected forces on all sides ; he assembled the estates 
of the realm, clergy, lords, and commons, and prevailed 



220 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1284. 

on them to furnish liberal supplies ; he obtained sentence 
of excommunication from the Archbishop of Canterbury. 
The Welsh made a brave defence, and, had it not been for 
the almost accidental capture and murder of Llewelyn 
in December, England might have found the task too 
hard for her. The death of Llewelyn, however, and the 
capture of David in the following June, deprived the 
Welsh of their leaders, and they submitted. 

Edward began forthwith his work of consolidation. 
David, as a traitor to his feudal lord, a conspirator 

against his benefactor, a blasphemer of God, 
Waies eSt ° f anc ^ a mur "derer, was tried by the king's 

judges at Shrewsbury and sentenced to a 
terrible death, the details of which were apportioned 
according to the articles of the accusation. Justice sa- 
tisfied, Edward devoted himself to the securing of his 
conquest; in 1284 he published at Rhuddlan a statute, 

called the Statute of Wales, which was in- 
WaksT ° f tended to introduce the laws and customs 

of England, and to reform the administra- 
tion of that country altogether on the English system. 
The process was a slow one ; the Welsh retained their 
ancient common law and their national spirit ; the ad- 
ministrative powers were weak and not far-reaching ; the 
sway of the lords Marchers was suffered to continue ; 
and, although assimilated, Wales was not incorporated 
with England. It was not until the reign of Henry VIII. 
that the principality was represented in the English Par- 
liament, and the sovereignty, which from 1300 upwards 
was generally, although not invariably bestowed on the 
king's eldest son, conferred under the most favorable 
circumstances, little more than a high-sounding title and 
some slight and ideal claim to the affection of a portion 
of the Welsh people. The task, however, which the 



a.d. 1284. Edward I. 221 

energies of his predecessors had failed to accomplish 
was achieved by Edward. All Britain south of the 
Tweed recognized his direct and supreme authority, and 
the power of the Welsh nationality was so far broken 
that it could never more thwart the determined and 
united action of England. 

During the first ten years of the reign the Welsh war 
and rumors of war were the chief matters that distracted 
Edward from the scarcely less congenial 

, _ . , , ,. . , • Edward as 

work of legislation and political orgamza- a i awg i V er. 
tion. The age was one of great lawgivers. 
Frederick II. had set the example in Naples, and his 
minister Peter de Vineis had codified there the laws and 
constitutions of the Norman kings of Sicily. Lewis IX. 
had in his " Etablissements " created a body of law for 
France ; and Alfonso the Wise in the " Siete Pallidas," 
or seven divisions of a system of universal law, had tried 
to do the same for Spain. Law had become a chief sub- 
ject of study in the universities, and Englishmen, es- 
pecially clergymen, had been used for a century to go 
to Bologna to read the canon and civil law under the 
great professors there. In England the expansion of 
judicial machinery and judicial business, which followed 
the reforms of Henry II., had worked, out of old and new 
materials, a body of customs which became known as the 
common law ; and one great summary of the hitherto 
unwritten law of England had been published towards the 
end of the last reign by Henry Bracton, one of the judges 
of the king's court. Men's minds had been invited by 
these and the like influences to this study. The nation, 
awaking to political work, began to see the necessity of 
changing or amending the existing system of law. 

In undertaking the work of a lawgiver, Edward I 
was simply approaching one part of his duty as a king; 



222 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1276-84. 

but his own mind had, as has been said, a 
^an'forthe legal bent; his chief minister Robert Bur- 
codification nell, was a great lawyer ; in his iournev 

of the law. " ... _ . a , . . ' ' . ■ J . 3 

through Italy, he had engaged the services 
of Francesco Accursi, an eminent jurist of Bologna, 
whose father had written a body of explanatory glosses 
on the Roman law. It is probable that the king had set 
before himself the codification of the law as one great 
object. The work of Britton, another eminent judge of 
his time, which is written in French, and contains much 
that is not in Bracton, was published in Edward's name ; 
and some of his longer Acts of Parliament contain pro- 
visions so varied and full, as almost to constitute codes 
in special departments of law. But the English nation 
seems to have had a dread of too elaborate systems, and 
the whole of the national law has never yet been under 
supreme authority embodied in a single compilation. 

The legislation of Edward I. must be sought in the 
statute books. It may be generally described as an at- 
tempt to develop and apply the principles 
Edward's* ° which had been conceded in Magna Carta 
legislation. an( j t0 ac j a pt them to the changed circum- 
stances of his time. That document had now become, 
what the laws of Edward the Confessor had been in the 
reign of Henry I., and the laws of Henry I. under John, 
the watchword of the party which was bent on prevent- 
ing any increase or abuse of royal power. 

Edward himself, who took for his motto the words 

" Pactum serva," which may be seen upon his tomb, not 

unnaturally regarded the demands which 

Edward and / r . . . . „ 

the Great were made for the re-issue of the Great 

Charter as a slur upon his good faith. Only 

once during the first half of his reign, did he undertake 

to re-confirm it ; and when the Archbishop of Canter- 



ch. x. Edward. I. 223 

bury in 1279, obtained the enactment of a canon by 
which copies of the charter were to be affixed to the 
doors of the churches, the king interfered to forbid it. 
It is not too much, perhaps, to say that it was the legal 
rather than the constitutional articles of the Great Charter 
that he took the most pains to develop. The influence 
of the great lords is conspicuous in some of the provi- 
sions of his statutes, which tend to restrict the liberty of 
alienating lands. Jealousy of ecclesiastical aggrandize- 
ment appears in others, which forbid the acquisition of 
new estates by the clergy. It cannot be supposed likely 
that a king like Edward, would miss his opportunity of 
strengthening the hold which he had on both barons and 
prelates. The idea of constitutional liberty had now 
grown so powerful that he knew that he could no longer 
make laws, or raise taxes, or even go to war without 
their consent. In those respects he could not coerce 
them. But the legal rights which the crown had over 
its own vassals were a different matter. It was quite 
practicable for him to exact the full pav- 

r r 1 i • , - Feudal 

ment 01 feudal services, to prevent the 1m- powers of 

poverishment of the crown, by the trans- l e ng ' 

ference of estates which paid a large revenue to the king 
on the occasion of successions or marriages of wardships, 
into the hands of religious corporations which neither 
died nor married, nor required tutelage. It was equally 
practicable to prevent the owners of great estates from 
cutting up their property, by what was called subinfeu- 
dation, into smaller holdings, which would not, any more 
than the church lands, render to the king the feudal ser- 
vices that he required. Two of Edward's most famous 
statutes — the statute " De Religiosis," in 1279, and the 
statute " Quia Emptores," in 1290, were intended to se- 
cure these two points. 



224 The Early Plajitagenets. ch. x. 

Again, all measures for the due interpretation and ex- 
ecution of the law protected the people at large against 

the usurpations of their strong neighbors, 
the feudal It is not to be forgotten that although in 

England the feudal landlords had, more 
than a century before, been deprived of their power to 
usurp jurisdiction over their vassals, and obliged to 
admit the king's judges, still a great part of Europe was 
governed under the old plan. We have seen how. 
during the barons' war, the party opposed to the king 
was divided between those who really desired the free- 
dom of the people, and those who wished to restrict the 
king's power in order to increase their own. In some 
important matters of judicial proceeding the interests of 
the crown and of the people at large were still united 
in opposition to the claims of the great land-owners. 
Hence the importance of regulating and improving the 
courts of provincial judicature, the limitation of the func- 
tions of the sheriffs, which fell constantly into the hands 
of local magnates ; the organization of the sessions of 
the king's judges, and the opening of ways by which 
suits, which could not be fairly or justly settled in the 
country, might be heard in the king's courts at West- 
minster. It is to the early years of Edward I., that we 
owe the final division of the three great royal tribunals ; 
, ^ the Court of Exchequer, in which were 

Courts of Ex- *■ 

chequer, heard all causes that touched the revenue ; 

and Common ' that of King's Bench, which determined 
Pleas. suits in which the king was concerned, 

criminal questions on the matters, which under the name 
of " pleas of the crown" were reserved for his particu- 
lar treatment ; and that of Common Pleas, which heard 
suits between private individuals. Now these matters 
were apportioned to three distinct staffs of judges, in- 



ch. x. Edward I. 225 

stead of being heard indiscriminately by the whole or 
part of the judicial body. The circuits of judges of as- 
size were defined during the same period of the reign. 
Many other measures for the protection of life and pro- 
perty helped to increase the feeling of security in the 
body of the people, to further the growth of loyalty, and 
at the same time to increase the royal income. 

A third principle of Edward's legislation may be dis- 
covered in the careful reform and expansion of some of 
the most ancient institutions, which he knew 
had in former reigns assisted greatly in the fl^hester 
defence of the crown and in the mainte- 
nance of peace and order. In the Statute of Winchester, 
in 1285, he placed the ancient militia system, which 
Henry II., had remodeled by the Assize of Arms, upon 
a better footing, and re-organized the " watch and 
ward," by which the particular districts and communi- 
ties were trained to keep order and to search for and 
arrest criminals. Similar methods were followed in the 
preparations for national defence in 1294, and both by 
sea and land the old duty of guarding the country, was 
based upon the same primitive system. In all these 
particular points we may trace ? purpose of developing 
the policy by which Henry II., had tried to overthrow 
the influence of feudalism, and to strengthen his admin- 
istration by alliance with the great body of the free 
people ; by placing arms in their hands, providing them 
with just and accessible tribunals, and by diminishing, 
as far as could be done, the means which the landlord 
had of oppressing those who held their land under him. 
We shall see by and by how the same principles affected 
his plans, or the plans which circumstances forced upon 
him, for the development of the Parliament and consti- 
tution. But before doing this we must look at the ques- 



226 The Early Plantagenets. ch. x. 

tion of finance, which, with those of war and legisla- 
tion, gave him, from the very beginning of the reign, 
a great deal of hard work. This has been already 
sketched in connection with the work of Henry II. It 
must now be viewed in fuller detail. 

The sources of royal revenue were various rather than 
abundant. There were, first of all, the estates of the 
Sources of crown, crown lands strictly so called, which 
the royal {-]- ie king as king possessed and managed 

like any other landlord, out of which he 
provided for his family and friends, and which, in spite 
of the national jealousy of favorites, were always more 
liable to be diminished than to be increased. Of the 
same class, though with some important differences, 
were the estates which fell into the hands of the sove- 
reign on the extinction of great families or the forfeiture 
of their owners ; so the earldom of Chester had come 
into the hands of Henry III. on the death of the last 
earl, and the estates of the Montforts after the battle of 
Evesham. These estates— escheats, as they were called 
— seldom remained long in the king's hands ; the mag- 
nates did not like to see the inheritances of their fellows 
one by one absorbed in the royal domain, and it was 
necessary from time to time to provide for new rising 
men and for younger sons of the king. The possession 
of crown estates is, of course, common to all ages and 
forms of royalty. But a somewhat intricate system per- 
vades the English finance of the middle ages, and grows 
out of the growing history of the nation itself. Under 
the Anglo-Saxon kings there had been little call for 
taxation. The king had a revenue from the public 
lands of the nation, which furnished him with provisions 
and money, enough to supply all needs that were not 
satisfied from his royal estates. It was a part of the 



CH. X. 



Edward I. 227 



sheriff's duty to collect these contributions, and they 
were later on fixed at a regular sum to be paid by the 
sheriff, and exacted by him from the county he ruled. 
All local administration was maintained by popular ac- 
tion, the land-owners being liable for the three great 
task's called " trinoda necessitas," the building of 
bridges and fortresses, and the service in arms for na- 
tional defence ; and thus the king had little expense if 
he had little revenue. In the great emergencies, how- 
ever, of the Danish wars, a tax of two shillings on the 
hide' of land, the famous Danegeld, was established and 
became perpetual. 

These three, the royal lands, the contributions of the 
shires, and the Danegeld, were the sources of revenue 
which William the Conqueror found when The Bx _ 

he had secured his hold on England. Under che( i uer - 

him, or under the ministers of William Rufus, were 
introduced a number of new expedients for raising 
money, expedients which were made easy by the new 
doctrine of land tenure that had been brought in at the 
Conquest. The Norman kings did not commute the 
old for the new methods, but simply added the feudal 
burdens to the ancient national taxes. The Exchequer 
under Henry I., audited the national, or rather the royal, 
accounts; twice a year the sheriffs paid the " ferm "— 
that is, the composition or rent for the ancient dues of 
their counties— the Danegeld, and the fines arising from 
the local courts of law ; but at the same times were paid 
the feudal incidents, the reliefs, the sums which the son 
paid to secure the inheritance of his father, the profits of 
marriages, of wardships, and the aids which the king as 
feudal lord of the whole land claimed as a right from 
his vassals. Henry I. had, in the beginning of his reign, 
promised to make these demands definite and reasona- 



228 The Early Plantagenets. ch. x. 

ble, and he had done so ; but they were heavy notwith- 
standing. Still nothing beyond these could, even on the 
feudal theory, be taken from the subject without the con- 
sent of the national council. When the king's necessi- 
ties were too great to be met by the ordinary means, the 
barons and bishops in council were asked for a grant ; 
and the inferior classes received in the county courts an 
intimation of what they were expected to contribute. It 
is true that there was little liberty of refusing or chance 
of evading payment, but a certain form of consent on 
the part of the tax-payer was thus maintained. 

After the time of Henry I. important changes had 

taken place in the matter of taxation, many of which 

have been noticed in our former pages. 

Changes in . 

the modes Henry II., as we saw, introduced the pay- 
ment of scutage, by which the land-owners 
contributed money instead of serving personally in 
arms. He likewise got rid of Danegeld, and consulted 
the towns and shires on the amount of grants required, 
by means of his itinerant judges. Until now all taxation 
had been defrayed by the land, except in the boroughs, 
where the contribution required was often raised by a 
poll-tax, an equal sum per head imposed on every in- 
habitant. Towards the end of the reign of Henry II. 
the custom of taxing movables, household furniture, and 
stock was introduced ; first, in order to raise the national 
contribution for the Crusade, known as the Saladin tithe. 
Great part of the money required for Richard's ransom 
was levied in the same way, and under John and Henry 
III. this became the most common way of taxing. A 
seventh, a tenth, a fifteenth, or a thirtieth of " mova- 
bles " was from time to time asked for, and the more 
frequent the need became the more fully was developed 
the idea that the tax-payer had a right to be consulted on 



ch. x. Edward I. 229 

the amount which he was to pay, and to gain, if he 
could, some advantage in return. John's frequent de- 
mands for money, and the illegal ways in which he took 
it, led to the exaction of the famous promise embodied 
in the 12th article of the Great Charter ; " No scutage 
or aid shall be imposed in our kingdom unless by the 
common counsel of our kingdom, except to ransom our 
own person, to make our first-born son a knight, and to 
marry once our first-born daughter." The 14th article 
describes the assembly which is to be called when any 
such impost is required: "We will cause our arch- 
bishops, bishops, abbots, earls, and greater barons to be 
summoned severally by our letters, and besides we will 
cause all who hold of us in chief to be summoned by 
general summons by our sheriffs and bailiffs." 

The growth of the country in wealth during the first 
half of the reign of Henry III. made this plan of rais- 
ing 1 revenue the most convenient and the __ 

. I he revenue 

easiest. As there were few foreign expedi- under 
tions there was little opportunity of asking 
for scutage, and nearly all the regular taxation was 
raised from movables, or, as we should now say, per- 
sonal property. On each occasion on which such a grant 
was demanded, the barons and bishops tried to obtain 
some compensation in the shape of a re-issue of the 
charters or an amendment of the law. The many con- 
firmations of the charters during that long reign were, 
it may be said, purchased from the crown in this way. 
But Henry could not obtain grants sufficient to meet the 
requirements of his greedy and extravagant court. He 
exacted, contrary to the letter and spirit of the charter, 
large sums from the citizens of London, under the name 
of gifts ; from the Jews, whom he looked upon very 
much as if they were part of the farming stock of his 



230 The Early Plantagenets. ch. x. 

realm ; and from every class of persons whom he could 
draw within the meshes of his legal nets, he exacted 
money by fine or composition for real or imaginary 
offences. 

But besides the land and the personal property of its 
inhabitants there was another source of income which 

ultimately was to become most lucrative — 
revenue. the taxation of merchandize, imported and 

exports 5 and exported, and especially the wool, wool-fells, 

and leather, which were, if not exactly the 
chief produce of the land, at least the most profitable, 
the least easy to conceal, and the most easy for the 
king's ministers to confiscate. These two branches of 
indirect taxation, although distinct in themselves, were 
managed by the same machinery — that of the customs ; 
and they have to be treated together. But the taxes on 
imported merchandize had their origin in the licenses to 
trade or to introduce particular sorts of goods, which it 
was one of the ancient rights of the king to grant, whilst 
the taxes on exported produce were primarily a part of 
the general system of taxing movables. Both had been 
long in requisition ; the privileges of the foreign mer- 
chants had been a source of profit even before the 
Conquest ; the wool of the Cistercian monks and other 
great sheep-farmers had been demanded for Richard's 
ransom, and both classes had suffered under John and 
Henry III. Magna Carta had contained, in its 41st 
article, a distinct provision in favor of free trade, which 
would have obviated the evils of mismanagement in 
this department, if it could have been carried out. All 
merchants were to have safe ingress and egress to and 
from England, and to pay only the right and ancient 
customs. But such a provision did not forbid separate 
negotiations between the king and traders, by which 



ch. x. Edward I. 



231 



both made a profit to be wrung from the consumers. 
One part of Edward's financial policy was to bring the 
customs into order and make them permanently and 
regularly profitable, and this he undertook in his first 
parliament. 

He had come home, deep in debt, to an inheritance 
heavily encumbered by his father's debts. He had ob- 
tained from the Pope, whom he visited at 

/-. . , 1 . . , Parliamentary 

Orvieto on his way, permission to exact a settlement of 
tenth of the income of the clergy for three ^J^rd i" 
years. But this would not be sufficient. He 
took counsel, therefore, with the Italian bankers, who 
had already obtained a footing in England, and devised 
the plan of obtaining from his assembled estates a per- 
manent revenue from wool ; half a mark — that is, six 
shillings and eightpence — on each sack of wool ex- 
ported. This is the legal foundation of the English 
customs. It was formally granted in the parliament 
which met soon after Easter 1275, and with a grant of a 
fifteenth of movables, and the tax already imposed on 
the clergy, provided him with a revenue which carried 
on the government for some years. Nor did it require 
material increase until Edward, in 1292 and 1293, be- 
came involved in a new series of wars. 

The exigencies of the Welsh war, the necessity for 
legal changes, and the orderly arrangement of the royal 
revenue, could not have failed to make their mark on 
the growth of parliament, even if Edward had not 
learned the lessons of constitutional lore which his 
father's reign had furnished ; and, even without those 
lessons, Edward was eminently qualified by the very 
habit of his mind to be a constitutional reformer. Ac- 
cordingly, in the parliaments of his reign, especially in 
those which were called at irregular intervals from 1275 



232 The Early Plantagenets. ch. x. 

to 1295, are found the clearest, most distinct, steps of 
growth, which led to the complete organization of the 
three estates of the realm in one central assembly. And 
here, again, we must take a brief retrospect. 

The days were long past in which either the king, the 

barons, or the nation at large were content to see the 

kingdom managed by a council of barons 

of represent an d bishops, gathered round a sovereign 

tativeas- w j 10 was f necessity either strong enough 

semblies tor / o o 

purposes of to coerce them or too weak to resist them. 
From the very beginning of the century the 
right of the tax -payer to give or refuse had been becom- 
ing more clearly recognized ; and the methods which 
under Henry I. and Henry II. had been used for facili- 
tating the collection of money provided a machinery 
which could be used for still more important purposes. 
In the twelfth century, when the king wanted money, 
and had declared in his council what he expected, he 
sent down his justices or barons of the Exchequer to ar- 
range with the towns and counties the sums which were 
to be contributed. Whilst land only was taxed all ques- 
tions of liability could be answered by reference to 
Domesday Book ; but when personal property was taxed 
it was necessary to discover how much each man pos- 
sessed before he could be made to pay. This could be 
ascertained only by consulting his neighbors; and, in 
order to do this, a system of assessment was devised by 
which the property of each tax-payer was valued by a 
jury of his neighbors. The custom of electing these 
assessors, and, further, of electing collectors for the 
counties, treasurers, and similar officers, familiarized 
the people with the idea of using representation for such 
business. For legal transactions they already used re- 
presentation in the county courts. The grand jury which 



ch. x. Edward I. 233 

presented the list of accused persons to the king's judges 
on circuit was, for instance, an elected and representa- 
tive body, chosen in the county court. The convenience 
of dealing thus with the government by representative 
accredited agents approved itself to both king and na- 
tion long before there was any idea of calling the repre- 
sentatives to parliament. On one occasion, in the reign 
of John, each shire had been ordered to send four dis- 
creet knights to speak with the king at Oxford ; and that 
Council of St. Albans, in which mention was first made 
of the charter of Henry I., contained representatives 
from every township in the royal demesne. In 1254, 
when Henry III. was in France, the queen regent sum- 
moned representative knights to the parliament to make 
a grant. In the parliaments which were held in 1259 and 
afterwards, representative knights brought up the lists of 
grievances under which their constituents were groaning ; 
and in 1264 Simon de Montfort had called up from both 
shires and boroughs representatives to aid him in the new 
work of government. That part of Earl Simon's work had 
not been lasting. The task was left for Edward I., to be 
advanced by gradual, safe steps but to be thoroughly com- 
pleted,, as a part of a definite and orderly arrangement, 
according to which the English Parliament was to be the 
perfect representation of the Three Estates of the Realm, 
assembled for purposes of taxation, legislation, and united 
political action. Under this system the several communi- 
ties were no longer to be asked to give their money or to 
accept the laws, by commissions of judges whom they 
could neither resist nor refuse, but were to send their depu- 
ties with full powers to act for them, to join with the lords 
and the judges and the king himself in deliberation on all 
the matters on which counsel and consent were needed. 
The steps of the change may be traced very briefly. 

Q 



234 The Early Plantageneis. ch. x. 

Edward's first parliament, in 1275, enabled him to pass 
a great statute of legal reform, called the Statute of 

Westminster the First, and to exact the new 
ments of custom on wool ; another assembly, the 

same year, granted him a fifteenth. Both 
these are said to represent the " communaulte," or com- 
munity of the land ; but there is no evidence that the 
commons of either town or county were represented. 
They were, in fact, consulted as to taxation by special 
commissions, as had been done before. In 1282, when 
the expenses of the Welsh war were becoming heavy, 
Edward again tried the plan of obtaining money from 
the towns and counties by separate negotiation ; but as 
that did not provide him with funds sufficient for his 
purpose, he called together, early in 1283, two great as- 
semblies, one at York, and another at Northampton, in 
which four knights from each shire and four members 
from each city and borough were ordered to attend ; the 
cathedral and conventional clergy also of the two pro- 
vinces being represented at the same places, by their 
elected proctors. At these assemblies there was no at- 
tendance of the barons ; they were with the king in 
Wales ; but the commons made a grant of one-thirtieth, 
on the understanding that the lords should do the same. 
Another assembly was held at Shrewsbury the same 
year, 1283, to witness the trial of David of Wales ; to 
this the bishops and clergy were not called, but twenty 
towns and all the counties were ordered to send repre- 
sentatives. Another step was taken in 1290: knights of 
the shire were again summoned ; but still much remained 
to be done before a perfect parliament was constituted. 
Counsel was wanted for legislation, consent was wanted 
for taxation. The lords were summoned in May, and did 
their work in June and July, granting a feudal aid and 



ch. x. Edward I. 235 

passing the statute " Quia Emptores," but the knights 
only came to vote or to promise a tax, after the law had 
been passed ; and the towns were again taxed by special 
commissions. In 1294 — for we must anticipate the thread 
of the general history — under the alarm of war with 
France, an alarm which led Edward into several breaches 
of constitutional law, he went still further, assembling 
the clergy by their representatives in August, and the 
shires by their representative knights in October. The 
next year, 1295, witnessed the first summons of a perfect 
and model parliament ; the clergy represented by their 
bishops, deans, archdeacons and elected proctors ; the 
barons summoned severally in person by the king's 
special writ, and the commons summoned by writs ad- 
dressed to the sheriffs, directing them to send up two 
elected knights from each shire, two elected citizens from 
each city, and two elected burghers from each borough. 
The writ by which the prelates were called to this par- 
liament, contained a famous sentence taken from the 
Roman law, " That which touches all should be approved 
by all," a maxim which might serve as a motto for Ed- 
ward's constitutional scheme, however slowly it grew 
upon him, now permanently and consistently completed. 
The House of Commons was not the only part of the 
parliamentary system that benefited by his genius for 
organization. The House of Lords became, 
under the same influence and about the Lords 6 ° f 
same time, a more definitely constructed 
body than it had been before. Up to this reign, the 
numbers of barons specially summoned had greatly 
varied. When they were assembled for military service 
they had been summoned by special writ, whilst the 
forces of the shires were summoned by a general order 
to the sheriff. Although a much smaller number were 



236 The Early Plantagenets. ch. x, 

requisite for purposes of counsel than for armed service, 
the two functions of the king's immediate vassals were 
intimately connected, and for a long period, every baron 
or land-owner who was summoned by name to the host, 
might perhaps claim to be summoned by name to the 
parliament. But such a summons was a burden rather 
than a privilege. The poorer lords, the smaller land- 
owners, would be glad to escape it, and to throw in their 
lot with the commons, who were represented by elected 
knights ; nor were the kings very anxious to entertain 
so large and disorderly a company of counsellors. The 
custom of calling to parliament a much smaller number 
of these tenants-in-chief than were called to the host, 
must have grown up during the reign of Henry III., as 
the idea of representation grew. From the reign of 
Edward I. it became the rule to call only a definite num- 
ber of hereditary peers ; and, although that rule was not 
based upon any legal enactment or any recorded reso- 
lution of government, it quickly gained acceptance as 
the constitutional rule ; the king could increase the 
number of lords by new writs of summons, and the 
special writ conferred hereditary peerage. This limited 
body was the House of Lords, and the dignity of the 
peerage descended from father to son, no longer tied to 
the possession of a particular estate or quantity of land 
held of the king. 

With the representatives of the commons and the 

estate of the lords Edward associated a representative 

assembly of clergy ; delegates were to be 

Representa- r 3 - ' ,?/ , ,. 

don of the sent from each diocese to each parliament 
c ergy. to assist in the national work and to tax the 

ecclesiastical property. And the form invented by Ed- 
ward in 1294 still subsists, although for many centuries 
110 such representatives have been chosen or sat in par- 



CH. x. Edward I. 237 

liament. In truth the clergy were averse to obeying the 
mandate for their appearance in a secular parliament, 
and preferred to vote the money, which it would have 
been very difficult for them to refuse, in the two pro- 
vincial convocations of York and Canterbury, which 
likewise contained their chosen representatives, assem- 
bled as a spiritual council. These were called together 
by the writs of the two archbishops ; they could, through 
the bishops, act in concert with the parliament, and 
were not unfrequently, in modern times invariably, 
called together within a few days of the meeting of par- 
liament. 

The latter half of Edward's reign witnessed most of 
the critical occasions which opened the way for those 
changes or improvements in the constitu- . 

tional system, and supplied means for test- policy of 
ing their efficiency. These must form the 
subject of another chapter. But we may pause, before 
we proceed, to mark definitely one other note of Ed- 
ward's policy. Henry II., had done his best to get rid 
of the feudal element in judicial matters, and to create 
a national army independent of the influences of land 
tenure. He had sent his judges throughout the land 
and taken the judicature out of the hands of the feudal 
lords. He armed all freemen under the assize of arms, 
and, by instituting scutage, raised money to provide 
mercenaries. By the national militia at home and by 
mercenary forces abroad he strengthened himself so as 
not to depend for an army on that feudal rule by which 
every landlord led his vassals to battle. Edward I., 
whilst he still more perfectly carried out these princi- 
ples, went further in the same direction, in his constitu- 
tion of parliament. The representatives whom he called 
up from the shires and towns were chosen by the free- 



4 38 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1284-9. 

men of the shires and towns in their ancient courts ; 
they were not the delegates of royal tenants-in-chief 
but of the whole free people. Even the barons who 
composed the House of Lords owed their places there 
not so much to the fact that they held great estates as 
the immediate vassals of the crown, as to the summons 
by which they were selected from a great number of 
persons so qualified. Even if this had not been the 
case, the institution of the House of Commons would 
itself have marked the extinction of the ancient feudal 
idea that the council of the king was merely the assem- 
bly of those who held their land under him. But it was 
so throughout Edward's policy. In court, and camp, 
and council, it was the general bond of allegiance and 
fealty, not the peculiar tie of feudal relation, by which 
he chose to bind his people, in their three estates, to 
help him to govern and to take their share in all na- 
tional work. 



CHAPTER XL 

THE CONFIRMATION OF THE CHARTERS. 

Punishment of the judges — Banishment of the Jews — Scottish suc- 
cession — The French quarrel — The ecclesiastical quarrel — The 
constitutional crisis — The confirmation of the charters — Par- 
liament of Lincoln — Its sequel — War of Scottish indepen- 
dence — Edward's death. 

Edward completed his work in Wales at the end of the 
year 1284. The next year was spent in legislation, and 

in the summer of 1286 he went to France. 
qJent onThe Edmund of Cornwall acted as regent in his 
a h Se k*n e ° f absence, and he stayed away for three years. 

For two out of the three the country was at 



ad. 1284-90. Edward I. 239 

peace; in 1288, however, the absence of the king began 
to tell, and in 1289 the need of money for home and 
foreign purposes became pressing. The news that the 
Earls of Gloucester and Hereford were engaged in all 
but open warfare on the Welsh marshes, and that the 
collected parliament of 1289 ^ ia( ^ refused to sanction a 
new tax before the king came home, brought Edward 
back in the August of that year. He found that the 
public service had suffered sadly from the removal of 
the guiding hand. Complaints were pouring in against 
the judges of the Courts of Westminster ; violence and 
corruption were charged upon the chief administrators 
of the law ; and the king's first work was to try the 
accused, to remove and punish the guilty. The two 
chief justices and several other high officers were, after 
careful investigation, deprived of their places. The next 
thing was if possible to gain a stronger hold over 
the uneasy earls. Gilbert of Gloucester, whose assist- 
ance had enabled Edward to overthrow Earl Simon at 
Evesham, and who had been the first to take the oath 
of fealty at his accession, had been throughout his career 
marked by singular erratic waywardness. He was not 
yet an old man, and a project had been on foot for some 
time, by which he was to marry the king's daughter 
Johanna, who was born at Acre during the crusade. 
This was now carried into effect, and thus one of the 
most dangerous competitors for influence in the country 
was bound more closely than ever to the king. 

That done Edward looked round for means of raising 
money. And this was found in a device which has ever 
since weighed heavily on his reputation. 
The Tews were banished from England, and Banishment 

J ° ' of the Jews. 

in gratitude for the relief the nation under- 
took to make a grant of money. The measure was no 



240 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1284-90. 

doubt generally acceptable ; it was backed by the clergy, 
by the strong influence of Eleanor of Provence, the 
king's mother, and by his own bitter prejudice. Harsh, 
nowever, as this measure was, it was not a mere act of 
religious persecution. The Jews had, unfortunately for 
the nation and for themselves, devoted themselves to 
usurious banking when usury was forbidden to Chris- 
tians. They had thus come to wear the appearance of 
oppressive money-lenders. They lived, too, under a 
system of law devised by the kings to keep them ever at 
the royal mercy ; their accumulated stores of gold lay 
conveniently under the king's hand, and Henry III., 
whenever he wanted money, had been able to obtain it 
by extortion from the Jews. But, last and worst, they 
had allowed themselves to be used by the rich as agents 
in the oppression of the poor ; they had made over the 
mortgages on small estates to the neighboring great 
land-owners, and in other ways had played into the 
hands of the nobles, whose protection was necessary to 
their own safety. They were hated by the poor. Great 
men, like Grosseteste and Simon de Montfort, had 
longed to see them banished ; the accusation of money- 
clipping and forgery was rife against them, and two 
hundred and eighty had been hanged for these offences 
since the beginning of the reign. Edward was too 
bigoted or perhaps too high-minded to wish to retain 
them as useful servants when the nation demanded 
their expulsion. They were banished, and the price 
paid for the concession was a tax of a fifteenth granted 
by clergy and laity in the autumn of 1290. 
r . Just at this time the death of the young 

Edward upon Queen of Scots opened to Edward the pros- 
Scotland. c .. , . a1 

pect of asserting his supremacy over the 
whole island, a prospect which within a few years tempt- 



A.D. 1290. 



Edward I. 241 



ed him to claim me actual sovereignty of Scotland. 
The design of a marriage between the young queen and 
Edward's eldest surviving son, Edward of Carnarvon, 
which had been already concluded, shows that the king 
contemplated the union of the two kingdoms in the next 
generation ; her death disappointed that hope, but th .re 
is no reason to suppose that Edward, when he undertook 
to settle the Scottish succession, had in his eye any pro- 
ject of conquest. 

The case of Scotland was very different from that of 
Wales. The Scottish people were a rising not a declin- 
ing nation. The Scottish kingdom was a The Scottish 
collection of states held by different histori- kingdom. 
cal titles, and inhabited by races of different origin, not 
a nationality struggling for existence. Southern Scotland 
was far more akin to Northern England than to North- 
ern Scotland ; inhabited by people of English blood and 
English institutions, and feudally held, like great part 
of England, by Norman barons. The royal race was a 
Celtic race, but Celtic Scotland gave to the kings little 
more than a nominal recognition ; the strength of the 
royal house was in the Lowlands. Ever since the Nor- 
man Conquest the relations between Scotland and Eng- 
land had been close. Of the several provinces over 
which the Scottish king now ruled, Lothian was a part 
of the ancient Northumbria, which had been granted, 
according to English accounts, by either Edgar the 
Peaceable or by Canute to a Scottish king. South-west- 
ern Scotland, or Scottish Cumberland, had been given 
by Edmund I. to Malcolm. The whole Scottish race 
had acknowledged as their father and lord Edward, the 
West Saxon king, the son of Alfred ; and William the 
Conqueror, and William Rufus, and after him, had ex- 
torted a recognition of the superiority or overlordship of 



242 The Early Plantagenets. A. d. 1290. 

the King of the English. These were shadowy claims, 
certainly ; but since the middle of the twelfth century 
there had been several instances in which either the 
King of Scots or his son had received English estates 
and dignities and done homage for them. The earldoms 
of Northumberland and Huntingdon had been thus held 
by Henry, son of David I., and the latter by his son 
William, the Lion. Homage had on several occasions 
been rendered without any very distinct understanding 
whether it was for the English earldoms, for the Low- 
land provinces, or for the whole Scottish kingdom, that 
the overlordship of the English crown was acknow- 
ledged. Henry II. had, indeed, after the capture of 
king William, compelled both him and his barons to re- 
cognize his superiority in the strictest terms, but Richard 
had liberated them from that special bondage, and the 
mutual reservations or compromises, which both pre- 
ceded and followed that short period of subjection, left 
the claims as vague as ever. Except during the same 
period the relations of the two kingdoms had been, since 
the death of Stephen, fairly friendly. The Scottish 
kings were married to kinswomen of the English kings ; 
their political progress followed at some short distance 
behind, but in the footsteps of the progress begun under 
Henry II., and for nearly a century there had been only 
short and languid intervals of war. Now and then the 
Scots had pillaged or intrigued, but the two crowns were 
generally at peace. Edward's design for the Scottish 
marriage would have turned the peace into union ; but 
the time was not come for that. 

These facts will explain the position taken 
EdwairTin^ h Y Edward in 1290. He believed that upon 
^ v ° r ° f him, as overlord, devolved the right of de- 

termining which of the many heirs was en- 



a.d. 1290-3. Edward I. 243 

titled to the succession. With great pomp and circum- 
stance he undertook the task ; obtained from the com- 
petitors a recognition of his character as arbitrator, and, 
after careful examination, decided the cause in favor of 
John Balliol, a powerful North Country baron of his 
own, in whom according to recognized legal right the 
inheritance vested. He was careful to obtain, on Balliol' s 
accession, a distinct homage for himself and his heirs 
for the whole kingdom of Scotland. This was the work 
of 1 291 and 1292 ; early in 1293 symptoms began to show 
themselves that the result would not be lasting. The 
rising troubles in the North were followed by an alarm 
on the side of France. The opportunity given by these 
troubles, and the means taken by Edward to meet them, 
combined to produce the complication of difficulties 
which brought about the great constitutional crisis of the 
reign in 1297. The several points must be taken in or- 
der : the relations with France first. 

In France Edward still possessed Gascony and some 
small adjoining provinces, which, after all the vicissi- 
tudes of the preceding century, had, mainly Relations of 
by the honesty and friendly feeling of Lewis ^^Ji 
IX. and Philip III., been preserved to the French 
descendants of Henry II. In 1279 Eleanor 
of Castile, his wife, had claimed as her inheritance the 
little province of Ponthieu, lying on the coast between 
Flanders and Normandy, and her claim had been re- 
cognized by Philip III. But Philip died in 1285, and his 
son, Philip IV., generally known as Philip the Fair, was 
a true inheritor of the guile and ability of Philip Augus- 
tus. Edward's long visit to France, from 1286 to 1289, 
had been spent partly in arranging for a continuance 
of friendship with the king, and partly in securing and 
reforming the administration of Gascony ; but he must 



244 The Early Plantagenets. A.D. 1290-3. 

have been aware that the jealousy with which Philip 
viewed him would sooner or later take the form of 
downright hostility. Until 1293, however, they continued 
to be friends. In that year a series of petty quarrels, 
between the Norman coast towns and the English 
sailors, and an outbreak between the Gascons and their 
neighbors, gave Philip his opportunity. He summoned 
Edward to Paris to render an account for the misdeeds 
of the offenders, and on his non-appearance condemned 
him to forfeiture. This was done with considerable craft. 
Edward, who had lost his faithful wife in 1290, was en- 
gaged in a negotiation for marriage with Margaret, the 
sister of Philip ; in preparation for that marriage a new 
enfeoffment or settlement of Gascony on the King of 
England and his heirs was agreed on. As a step towards 
that settlement the fortresses of Guienne were for form's 
sake placed in Philip's hands, and as soon as he had 
hold of them he declared Edward a contumacious vas- 
sal, for not having obeyed his summons to Paris. This 
was done in May, 1294. 

The news of this outrageous proceeding was received 

in England with great indignation, and for a moment it 

appeared that the nation was unanimously 

ceTofthe 11 " determined to uphold the rights of the king. 

quarrel with Even John Balliol, the King of Scots, who 

Philip the J . . f . 

Fair. had got himself into trouble owing to his 

divided duties to his subjects and his 
overlord, and who was present in the Parliament 
which Edward called in June, offered to devote 
the whole produce of his English estates to main- 
tain the righteous cause. A great scheme was 
set on foot for foreign alliances : the Spaniards were 
asked for substantial assistance ; the princes of the Low 
Countries, the King of the Romans too, were taken into 



a.d. 1296-7. Edward I. 245 

pay. A thorough scheme for the defence of the coast 
and organization of the navy was devised. Edward's 
urgent needs or consistent policy led him to assemble, as 
we saw, the estates of the kingdom, in a way in which 
they had never been brought together before, and the 
parliaments of 1294 and 1295 completed the formation 
of the constitutional system. But a rising on the Welsh 
border prevented any general expedition in 1294 ; and 
the dread of a common enemy threw the Scots in 1295 
into correspondence with France. Edward, provoked at 
the delay, pressed by the deficiency and waste of his re- 
sources, had recourse to very exceptional measures for 
raising money, and so produced a reaction against the 
foreign war, and a combination of political forces most 
dangerous to his own authority, and most trying to the 
new machinery of government at the very moment of its 
completion. The model parliament of 1295 was followed 
by the crisis of 1296, and the confirmation of charters of 
1297. 

So strong a king, so determinate a policy, was sure to 
provoke complaints ; the very enforcement of order wears 
the appearance of oppression. Both clergy 
and laity had their grievances, and Edward's Edward S ° 
extremity gave them their opportunity. The with the 
clergy with a certain number of bishops at 
their head, had throughout the struggles of the century 
ranged themselves on the side of liberty. The inferior 
clergy had always had much in common with the people, 
and John's conduct during the Interdict had broken the 
alliance which ever since the Norman Conquest had sub- 
sisted between the great prelates and the court. Stephen 
Langton had set an example which was bravely followed. 
Henry III., by his love of foreigners, his obsequious be- 
haviour to the popes, and his unscrupulous dealings in 



246 The Early Planiagenets. a. d . 1296-7. 

money matters alienated the national Church almost as 
widely as John had done ; while Simon de Montfort had 
conciliated all that was good and holy. But when Henry 
III. with the abuses which he had maintained, had passed 
away, and when Church and nation alike saw that Edward 
was laboring for the benefit of his people with all his 
heart, matters might have been changed. There was 
doubtless need for watchfulness on the part of the clergy, 
for the ministers of the court were always on the look- 
out for means to limit the spiritual power ; but defensive 
watchfulness is a different thing from aggression. Three 
successive archbishops had ruled since Edward's acces- 
sion, all of them anxious to promote the independence of 
the Church and to diminish the power of the crown, even 
if it were to be done by throwing the Church more entirely 
into the hands of the Pope. Hence it was that Archbishop 
Peckham in 1279 had declared himself the champion of 
the Great Charter, although the Great Charter was not 
assailed, and had in a council at Reading passed several 
canons which were intended to limit the king's action in 
ecclesiastical causes. Edward in return had taken his 
opportunity of repressing what seemed to him to be eccle- 
siastical innovation ; he had interfered to prevent the 
publication of the canons, and had made the archbishop 
apologize and withdraw them. Not content with this, 
he took advantage of the occasion to pass the statute 
" De Religiosis," by which he prevented the clergy from 
acquiring more land than they held at the time, with- 
out express permission. The taxation of the clergy too 
was heavy ; the popes were as willing to minister to 
Edward's needs as they had been to supply his father 
with money from the revenues of the English Church. 
More than once they had empowered him to collect a 
three years tenth of all the revenue of the clergy for the 



a.d. 1297. Edward I. 247 

purpose of a crusade which was never carried out, and in 
1288 Pope Nicolas IV. ordered a new and very exact 
Valuation of all church property. This valuation included 
both temporal property, that is land, and spiritual, that 
is tithes and offerings. Such a permanent record laid 
them open at any moment to exaction. But Edward 
was not satisfied to have to ask the Pope's leave to tax 
his own subjects, whether clerical or lay ; he had begun 
to assemble the clergy in councils of their own, for the 
purpose of obtaining money grants, and, a little later, 
gave them a representative constitution as an estate of 
parliament. They were, on the other hand, unwilling to 
obey the summons to attend a secular court, and to 
spend their money on secular purposes, much more so 
when it was demanded out of all proportion and without 
reasonable consultation. Robert Winchelsey, who be- 
came archbishop in 1294, was fitted to be the leader of 
a strong ecclesiastical opposition. He was a pious, 
learned and far-seeing man, but he was fully possessed 
with the idea that the king was determined to subject 
the Church to the State ; and he knew that in the Pope, 
Boniface VIII. , he had a friend and supporter who 
would not desert him. He was ready to fight the battle 
the prospect of which was very near. 

Edward regarded the situation of affairs in 1294 as 
entitling him to assume the office- of dictator ; to take 
all advantage of the law offered him for rais- 

, 1 , • r 1 Quarrel be- 

ing men and money ; but, if he saw means tween Ed- 

which the law did not warrant, to use them J5e r ^. and the 
also as justified by the necessity of the case. 
So he not only assembled the barons, clergy, and com- 
mons, to obtain money grants from them, but seized the 
wool of the merchants and took account of the treasures 
of the churches. It is true that by negotiating with the 



248 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1297. 

merchants in assemblies of their own he obtained their 
consent to pay a large increase of custom on the wool, 
and that he did not actually confiscate the church trea- 
sure, still the measures were oppressive and alarming ; 
and when in the autumn council of 1294 he demanded 
one-half of the revenue of the Church the alarm became 
a panic. The clergy yielded, only to find another heavy 
demand made on them the next year ; but the king was 
becoming irritated by delay and the clergy emboldened 
by papal support. Boniface VIII., in February 1296, 
issued a famous Bull called, from its opening words, the 
Bull Clericis Laicos, in which he forbade the king to 
take or the clergy to pay taxes on their ecclesiastical 
revenue. Armed with this Archbishop Winchelsey in 
1297 declined to agree to a money grant, and the king 
replied by placing all the clergy, who would not submit, 
out of the protection of the law. 

But by this time the spirit of the laity was roused. 
Gilbert of Gloucester was dead, and the heads of the 
- . „ baronage were Roger Bigod, Earl of Nor- 

Discontent of ° o & » 

the greater folk, the Marshall, and Humfrey Bohun 
the growth of Earl of Hereford, the Constable of Eng- 
power Yal land ; men not of high character or of much 

patriotism, but of great power and spirit, 
and eager to take the opportunity c : asserting their posi- 
tion, which the king's measure for enforcing equal jus- 
tice had threatened to shake. Bohun, too, had been 
imprisoned on account of the private war which he had 
carried on against Gloucester in 1288. Edward's legal 
reforms had touched the baronage like every other class. 
A close inquiry into the title by which they held their 
estates and local jurisdictions — the commission, as it was 
called, of " quo warranto " — had alarmed them in 1278 ; 
then the Earl Warenne had boldly averred that his war- 



a.d. 1297. Edward I, 249 

rant was the sword by which his lands had been won, 
and by which he was prepared to defend them. They 
found too that, although the new legislation in some re- 
spects gave them a stronger hold on their vassals, that 
advantage was counterbalanced by the stronger hold 
which the king gained by it over themselves. They did 
not care to have too strong a king, or one who ruled 
them by ministers of his own choosing. When, then, 
early in 1297, Edward called for the whole military force 
of the kingdom to go abroad, part to follow him to 
Flanders to support his allies, and part to go to Gascony, 
they determined to thwart him. It was a moot question 
how far they were bound to foreign service at all ; the 
king himself seemed to be asking them for a favor 
rather than a right. They knew that the clergy were 
hostile on account of the taxes, and the merchants on 
account of the wool ; they would make the king feel 
their strength. Edward himself acted unwisely ; he had 
become exasperated with the delay ; he had lost his 
early and best counsellor, Robert Burnell, and had taken 
in his place Walter Langton, the treasurer, a faithful but 
unpopular and unscrupulous man, and he had conceived 
the notion, which was probably a true one, that the 
barons wished to embarrass him. The plea of neces- 
sity by which he tried to justify himself must also justify 
him with posterity. 

The year 1297 saw the contest decided. In February, 
the king had summoned the barons to meet at Salisbury. 
When they were assembled the two earls A ,. . 

* Assembly of 

refused to perform their offices as marshal the barons at 
and constable ; the clergy were in a state 
of outlawry, and the king did not venture to summon 
the representatives of the commons. The assembly 
broke up in wrath. Edward again laid hands on the 



250 The Early Plantagenets. A. d. 1297. 

wool, summoned the armed force, and put in execution 
the sentence against the clergy ; the barons assembled 
in arms, the bishops threatened excommunication. In 
spite of this, the king, in July, collected the military 
strength of the nation at London and tried to bring 
matters to a decision. As the earls would not yield he 
determined to submit to the demands of the clergy, and 
to use his influence with the commons so as to get, even 
informally, a vote of more money. Winchelsey saw his 
opportunity. If the king would confirm the charters, 
the Great Charter and the charter of the forests, he 
would do his best to obtain money from the clergy ; the 
Pope had already declared that his prohibition did not 
affect voluntary grants for national defence. 

JfEdwlrdlnd The chief men of the commons, who al- 
Archbishop though not summoned as to parliament were 

present in arms, agreed to vote a tax of a 
fifth ; and the people were moved to tears by seeing the 
public reconciliation of the archbishop with the king, 
who commended his son Edward to his care whilst he 
himself went to war. 

But the end was not come even now. The archbishop 
and the earls knew how often the charters had been 

confirmed in vain in King Henry's days ; 
tion of the an d ft was an evil omen that the king, 
estabHshi whilst offering to confirm them, was at- 

the right of tempting to exact money v/ithout a vote of 
to deter- Parliament. They drew up a series of new 

at i on , articles to be added to the Great Charter, 

and, after some difficulty, forced them upon 
the king just as he was preparing to embark. Edward 
saw that he must yield, but he left his son and his min- 
isters to finish the negotiation. As soon as he had sailed 
the earls went to the Exchequer and forbade the officers 



a.d. 1297. Edward I. 251 

of that court to collect the newly-imposed tax ; the 
young Prince Edward was urged to summon the knights 
of the shire to receive the copies of the charter which 
his father had promised, and on October 10 the charters 
were re-issued, with an addition of seven articles, by 
which the king renounced the right of taxing the nation 
without national consent. It is true that these articles 
were not drawn up with such exactness as to prevent all 
evasion, and Edward I. and Edward III. are accused of 
using the obscurities of the wording to justify them in 
transgressing the spirit of the concession. But the con- 
firmation of the charters, however won, was the comple- 
tion of the work begun by Stephen Langton and the 
barons at Runnymede. It established finally the prin- 
ciple that for all taxation, direct and indirect, the con- 
sent of the nation must be asked, and made it clear that 
all transgressions of that principle, whether within the 
letter of the law or beyond it, were evasions of the spirit 
of the constitution. The seven articles were these : by 
the first the charters were confirmed ; by the second all 
proceedings in contravention of them were declared 
null ; by the third copies of them were to be sent to the 
cathedral churches to be read twice a year ; and by the 
fourth the bishops were to excommunicate all who 
transgressed them. These four were the contribution of 
the prelates, the condition under which the clergy had 
been reconciled. By the fifth article the king declared 
that the exactions, by which the people had been 
aggrieved, should not be regarded as giving him a cus- 
tomary right to take such exactions any more ; by the 
sixth he promised that he would no more take such 
" aids, tasks, and prizes but by common assent of the 
realm ; " and by the seventh he undertook not to im- 
pose on the wool of the country any such " maletote " 



252 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1297 

or heavy custom in future without their common assent 
and good will. It would have been clearer if the rights 
renounced had been absolutely renounced and clearly 
specified. The king and his servants soon learned that, 
without taking such taxes and maletotes as had been 
complained of, they could by negotiating with the mer- 
chants raise money indirectly without consulting parlia- 
ment, but that excuse was never allowed by the par- 
liament to be sufficient, and, when they could, they 
closed every opening for evasion. Thus was England's 
greatest king compelled to make to his people the 
greatest of all constitutional concessions, at the very 
moment at which by his new organization of Parlia- 
ment he had placed the nation for the first time in a 
position in which they could compel him to fulfill it. It 
was to some extent a compromise, in which both parties 
felt themselves justified in putting their own interpreta- 
tion on the terms by which they had been reconciled, 
but it is not the less a landmark in the history of 
England, second only to Magna Carta. The confiri7iatio 
cartarum is the fulfillment, made now to the whole con- 
solidated people, of the promises made in the charter 
to a nation just awaking to its unity and to the sense 
of its own just claims. 

Before we turn again to the military work of the reign, 
the war for the subjection of Scotland, which was one 
of the main causes of Edward's difficulties at this time, 
and which furnished him with hard work 
of Edward with for the rest of his life, we may briefly sum 
ins subjects. up the se q uel f {kg great constitutional 

crisis. Not the least of the causes that led to Edward's 
irritation, and provoked him to impolitic violence, was 
the thought that the nation did not trust him. From the 
beginning of the reign he had labored indefatigably for 



A.D. 1297-9. Edward I. 253 

their good ; he had amended their laws, and had given 
them what, to all intents and purposes, was a new and 
free constitution. He felt that he had a right to their 
confidence, and a right to direct, if not also to control, 
the mechanism which he had created. But as yet it was 
only thirty years since the Battle of Evesham. Men 
were still alive who remembered the countless tergiver- 
sations of Henry III., and who, so warned, could scarcely 
help suspecting that Edward in the hour of need would 
repudiate his obligations, as his father had done. They 
did not profess to be satisfied with the act of confirma- 
tion which Edward sealed at Ghent on November 5, 
1297. As soon as he returned from Flanders, in the fol- 
lowing year, the earls insisted on a renewal - 

... Re-confirma- 

of the act, and, before they would join him tionofthe 
in the Scottish war, the king had to promise 
to grant it. In March, 1299 the promise was fulfilled, 
but the confirmation was even now regarded as incom- 
plete. The enforcement of the charter of the forests in- 
volved a new survey of the forests, and the king, when 
he promised that this should be done, made a distinct 
reservation of the rights of the crown, and of some 
questions which had just been referred to the court of 
Rome. The reservation appeared to the people to be an 
evident token of insincerity ; and to calm the excite- 
ment Edward, two months afterwards, executed an un- 
conditional confirmation. Still, however, it was declared 
that the forest reforms were intentionally delayed ; and 
in a full parliament, held at London in March, 1300, the 
confirmation was repeated, additional articles being em- 
bodied in an important act called " The articles upon 
the charters." In consequence of these the survey of 
the forests was made and the report of the survey pre- 
sented to a parliament held at Lincoln in January, 1301, 



254 The Early Plantagenets. a . d . 1 3 00- 1 . 

at which all the old animosities threatened to revive, and 
the barons, backed by the commons, and with Arch- 
bishop Winchelsey at their head, subjected the king to 
a pressure which he felt most bitterly and never forgave. 
Again he was in grievous want of money. The Pope 
had claimed the overlordship of Scotland, and it was of 

„ , the utmost importance that he should re- 

Papal . ....... P 

claims over ceive a united and unhesitating answer trom 

the assembled nation. In spite of all the 
concessions that Edward had made so reluctantly, show- 
ing by his very reluctance that he intended to keep 
them, a new list of articles was presented as conditions 
on which money would be granted. Nay, even if the 
king agreed to the articles, the Archbishop, on the part 
of the clergy, would consent to no grant that the Pope 
had not sanctioned. Again Edward yielded, although 
he refused to admit the article in which the Tope's con- 
sent was mentioned. It was by thus yielding probably, 
that he obtained from the whole assembled baronage a 
distinct denial of the Papal claims over Scotland. But 
the prelates and clergy did not join in the letter ad- 
dressed in consequence to the Pope ; and Edward, put- 
, , ting the two things together, chose to regard 

Quarrel of & . , ' . . . . , 

Edward the archbishop as a traitor in intention if 

bishop not in act. The knight who had presented 

Winchelsey. j. Q |^ m ^ Q ar ticles at Lincoln, was sent for 
a short time to prison, as a concession perhaps to Walter 
Langton, whose dismissal had been asked for. Winchel- 
sey's punishment was delayed as long as Pope Boniface 
lived; but, when Clement V. in 1305 succeeded him, the 
Archbishop was formally accused, summoned to Rome, 
and suspended, nor was he allowed to return to England 
during the remainder of the reign. This quarrel is a sad 
comment on the conduct of two great men, both of whom 



A..D. 1302-4. Edward I. 255 

had at heart the welfare of England ; but if the balance 
must be struck between them, it inclines in favor of Ed- 
ward. He may have been somewhat vindictive, but his 
adversary had taken cruel advantages of his needs, had 
credited him with unworthy motives, and with a guile of 
which he knew himself to be innocent ; and the arch- 
bishop had, in order to humiliate him, laid him open to 
the most arrogant assumptions on the part of the Pope. 
Winchelsey wished to be a second Langton ; Edward 
was not, and was incapable of becoming, a second John. 
The Parliament of Lincoln closes the constitutional 
drama of the reign ; but two or three minor points in 
connection with what has gone before may Edward and 
be mentioned here. In 1303 and 1304 the foreign 

. . e merchants. 

Edward was again m great straits for 
money, and he did not wish to be again subjected to 
the treatment which he had endured at Lincoln. In 
searching for the means of raising a revenue he recurred 
to the same source from which he had obtained the 
custom of wool at the beginning of his reign — the assist- 
ance of the merchants. He called together the foreign 
merchants in 1303 and offered them certain privileges of 
trading, on the condition that they should consent to 
pay import duties. They agreed ; and, although an 
assembly of English representatives from the mercan- 
tile towns refused to join in the arrange- 
ment, the institution held good. The The New 
"New Custom," the origin of our import 
duties, was established without the consent of parlia- 
ment, although not in direct contravention of the Act of 
1297, for it was a special agreement made with the con- 
sent of the prayers and in consideration of immunities 
received. In 1304 he adopted an expedient even more 
hazardous, and collected a tallage from the royal de- 



256 The Early Plantagenets. a. d. 1295. 

mesne ; yet even here he avoided breaking the letter of 
his promise. Such tallage was not expressly renounced 
in 1297, and it was now sanctioned by the consent of 
the baronage, who raised money from their vassals in 
the same way. In 1305 he did a still more imprudent 
and dangerous act, in obtaining from Clement V. a 
formal absolution from the engagements taken in 1297. 
Except in a slight modification of the forest regulations, 
which was perhaps made rather as a demonstration of 
his power than as a real readjustment of the law, he 
took no advantage of this absolution. These three facts, 
however, remain on record as illustrations of Edward's 
chief weakness, the legal captiousness, which was the 
one drawback on his greatness. The last was too 
grievously justified by the morality of the time, and 
proves that in one respect at least Edward was not 
before other men of the age. 

We turn now to trace the course of events which had 

so powerfully affected the king's action during these 

critical years. We saw him in 1294 prepar- 

Rebellion ins: for an expedition to France, which was 

in Wales => r 

under delayed until 1207 by troubles in Wales and 

Madoc. „ , , i 1 1 i- ■ -1 

Scotland, and by the political crisis on 
which we have dwelt so long. The Welsh revolt under 
Madoc, a kinsman of the last princes, involved an expe- 
dition which Edward himself in the winter of 1294 led 
into Wales. It was an unseasonable undertaking, and 
attended with no great success. Madoc was, however, 
taken prisoner in 1295, and the rebellion came to an 
end. The Scottish troubles were more general and 
lasted much longer. 

John Balliol had from the beginning of his reign felt 
himself in a false position, distracted between his duties 
to Edward as his suzerain and patron, and his duties to 



A.d. 1295. Edward I. 257 

his subjects. By a curious coincidence Ed- _ , 

J J Summons 01 

ward had summoned him to appear as a Edward to 

, . , . , , . BallioL 

vassal in his court to answer the complaints 
of the Earl of Fife, in the very year that he himself was 
summoned to appear at Paris to answer the complaints of 
the Normans. The neglect and contempt with which 
Balliol was treated may have embittered his feelings to- 
wards Edward, yet in 1294 he had been the foremost of 
the barons in offering help against France. But it is 
clear that he was not a man of strong will or decided 
views ; that he could not easily bring himself to break 
with Edward, and so throw himself on the support of 
the Scottish baronage, and that even Edward's support 
did not make him strong enough to defy them. He 
halted between the two and lost his hold on both. In 
1295 the Scottish lords determined, in imitation of the 
French court, to institute a body of twelve peers who 
were practically to control the action of Balliol, and 
opened negotiations for an alliance with Alliance of 
France. Such an alliance was then a new ^^France 
thing, but in its consequences it was one of 
the most important influences of mediaeval history, for 
it not only turned the progress of Scottish civilization 
and politics into a French channel, leading the Scots to 
imitate French institutions, as they had hitherto copied 
those of England, but gave to the French a most effec- 
tive assistance in every quarrel with England, down to 
the seventeenth century. As soon as Edward learned 
that such a negotiation was in progress he demanded 
that, until peace should be made between Philip and 
himself, the border castles of Scotland should be placed 
in his hands. This was at once refused, and war broke 
out. In March, 1206, Edward took and 

' y 3 Scottish 

sacked Berwick, and the Scots threatened war. 



2 $8 The Early Plantagenets. A. d. 1295-8. 

Carlisle. The unfortunate Balliol seeing himself at last 
compelled to choose between the two evils, renounced 
his allegiance to Edward, and almost immediately 
paid the penalty of his temerity. The Earl Wa- 
renne won a great victory at Dunbar in April, and 
Surrender to °k Edinburgh ; Balliol surrendered in 

Ed Bal d° l t0 J u ty' ano - was obliged to resign the crown to 

his conqueror. The Scottish regalia were 
carried to England. The coronation-stone, which tra- 
dition identified with the stone on which the patriarch 
Jacob had rested his head at Bethel, was removed from 
Scone to Westminster. The chief nobles of Scotland 
were led away as hostages, and Scotland, if not subdued, 
was so far cowed into silence that during 1297 Edward 
thought it safe to leave it under the government of the 
Earl Warenne. Sir William Wallace, the somewhat 
obscure and mythical hero of Scottish liberation, re- 
mained, however, in arms against him, and he in Sep- 
tember defeated the Earl Warenne at Cambuskenneth, 
and drove the English out of the country. Edward's 

expedition to France, so long delayed, ter- 
pen Eng- minated in March 1298 in a truce of two 
land and years, which was renewed in 1299 and 

turned into a peace in 1303. As a pledge 
of the arrangement Edward married Margaret, the sister 
of Philip, in 1299. The Scots thus lost at first the active 
help of their new ally. Immediately on his return Ed- 
ward resumed the attack upon them, and the victory 
won at Falkirk in July 1298 proved his continued supe- 
riority, while it served to stimulate the national aspira- 
tions of the Scots, and, what was even more important, 
taught them that, if they were still to be free, they must 
learn to act as a united people. 

Wallace's victory at Cambuskenneth had earned for 



a.d. 1 298-1303. Edward I. 259 

him the jealousy instead of the confidence of the Scot- 
tish nobles ; the defeat at Falkirk was made Affairs in Scot . 
•an excuse for declining his leadership and land after the 

> , n e , , fall of Balliol. 

clinging to the shadowy royalty of the im- 
prisoned Balliol. They chose a council of regency to 
govern Scotland in his name. Three regents were 
elected; the bishop of St. Andrew's was one ; the other 
two were John Comyn, lord of Badenoch, and Robert 
Bruce, Earl of Carrick ; sons of two of the lords who 
had competed for the crown when Balliol was chosen. 
Wallace was not even named. Some small successes 
now fell to the Scots : in 1299 they compelled the Eng- 
lish garrison in Stirling Castle to capitulate ; in 1 300 they 
foiled the invading army by avoiding a pitched battle, 
and, at the close of the campaign, obtained by the me- 
diation of the French a truce which lasted till the sum- 
mer of 1 301. It was just then that Boniface VIII. , had laid 
claim to the suzerainty of Scotland, and Edward's time 
was spent during the truce in obtaining from his barons 
a unanimous declaration against that claim. This, as 
we saw, was done in the parliament of Lincoln. Al- 
though the papal argument was one to which Edward 
could not refuse to listen, Boniface's influence with Arch- 
bishop Winchelsey gave him more trouble than the illu- 
sory claim. 

The Scottish campaign of 1301 was a repetition of 
that of the preceding year ; Edward spent the winter in 
the country and built a castle at Linlithgow ; and another 
truce was made, which lasted to the winter of 1302. 

The conclusion of peace with France in 1 303 left Ed- 
ward free to direct all his strength against Scotland \ 
and the Scots, under Comyn as regent, were campaign of 
now in better condition to resist. They had f^k£d! n 
defeated the English army under Sir John 



260 The Early Platitagenets. a.d. 1303-5 

Segrave in February, and were preparing for greater ex- 
ertions, when the news arrived that not only the Pope 
but the French had deserted them. No provision in 
their favor was contained in the treaty of peace ; and 
Edward was already in the country in full force. The 
year 1303 appeared to be a fatal year to the hopes of 
Scotland Edward marched the whole length of the 
country as far north as the Moray Frith, and within sight 
of Caithness. Stirling alone of all the castles of the land 
was left in the possession of the native people, and after 
a futile attempt under the walls of Stirling to intercept 
the invader, they seem to have given up all idea of re- 
sistance. The so-called governors of the Scots surrend- 
ered and submitted on condition of having their lives, 
liberties, and estates secured ; a few patriotic men were 
excepted from the benefit of the act, the chief of whom 
was Wallace, against whom as the leading spirit of 
liberty Edward's indignation burned most hotly, and 
whom the selfish and jealous lords cared least to pro- 
tect. Stirling, after a brave resistance, surrendered in 
July, and Scotland seemed to be at last subdued. The 
hero Wallace, taken by treachery in 130=;, 

Capture and J . J ' 

execution of was sent to London to be tried and put to 
death as a traitor. The execution of this 
sentence is one of the greatest blots upon Edward's cha- 
racter as a high-minded prince. Only the profound con- 
viction that his own claims over Scotland were indis- 
putably legal and that all the misery and bloodshed 
which had followed the renewal of the war must justly 
be charged upon Wallace — a conviction akin in origin 
to the other mistakes which we have traced in Edward's 
great career — can have overcome the feeling of admira- 
tion and sympathy which he must have felt for so brave 
a man. 



A.D. 1306-7. Edward I. 261 

Wallace perished in 1305. In the same year Edward 
drew up a new constitution for Scotland, dividing the 
country into sheriffdoms like the English counties and 
providing machinery for the representation of the Scots 
at the meetings of the English parliament. But the ar- 
rangement was very short-lived. Scarcely four months 
had elapsed when the new and more suc- 

1 . . Edward's new 

cessful hero of Scottish history, Robert constitution for 
Bruce, declared himself. He was the son 
of the regent Earl of Carrick, but had hitherto clung to 
the English interest, in the hope that Edward would at 
last set him in the place of Balliol. When the new 
measures for the government of Scotland were drawn 
up, disappointment, mingled perhaps with the shame 
which Wallace's death must have inspired, led him to 
quit the court and return to Scotland. At _ 

A r • 1 • /- -i -i t 1 Return of 

Dumfries, early m 1306, he slew John Robert Bruce 
Comyn, the late regent, whom he could not ° ' 

induce to join him. He then gathered round him all 
whom he could prevail on to trust him ; and by his 
energy and military ability took all his enemies by sur- 
prise. In March, he was crowned at Scone. 

His success was too great to be permanent ; before 
the close of the summer Aymer de Valence, Edward's 
lieutenant, had driven him into the islands, 
and the king himself soon followed and put Brae" 68 ° f 
an end to all collective opposition. Still 
Bruce was active, and defied all attempts to crush him. 
Constantly put to flight and as constantly reappearing, 
he kept the English armies on the alert during the winter 
of 1306 and the spring of 1307 ; and in July, on his lasc 
march from Carlisle against him, king Edward died. 

Edward had just passed into his sixty-ninth year. He 
was older than any king who reigned in England before 



262 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1307, 

him, nor did any of his successors until 
Edward I. Elizabeth attain the same length of years. 

His life had been one, in its earlier and 
later portions, of great exertion, both bodily and mental •- 
and constant labor and irritation had made him during 
his latter years somewhat harsh and austere. His son, 
Edward, gave no hopes of a happy or useful reign ; he 
had already chosen his friends in defiance of his father's 
wishes, and been rebuked by the king himself for miscon- 
duct towards his ministers. Edward had outlived, too, 
most of his early companions in arms ; he saw a genera- 
tion springing up who had not passed through the train- 
ing which he and they had had, and who were more 
luxurious and extravagant, less polished and refined 
TX . , than the men of his youth. An earnestly 

His cri3.r3.c* m 

terand religious man, he had been unable to keep 

on good terms with the great scholar and 
divine who filled the see of Canterbury, or even with the 
Pope himself. The people for whom he had labored 
and cared, were scarcely as yet able to understand how 
much they had gained by his toil ; how even in his 
foreign undertakings he was fighting the battles of Eng- 
land, and earning for them and for their posterity, a 
place which should never again be lost in the councils 
of Europe. But though his bodily strength was gone his 
mental vigor was not abated, nor his belief in the justice 
of his cause. When he made his solemn vow, at the 
knighting of Prince Edward in 1306, to avenge the mur- 
der of Comyn and punish the broken faith of the Scots, 
he looked on them not as a noble nation fighting for 
liberty, but as a perjured and rebellious company of out- 
laws, whom it would be a shame to him as a king and 
as a knight not to punish. The sin of breaking faith, the 
crime which his early lessons had taught him to think 



A.D. I307. 



Edward II 263 



the greatest which could be committed by a king, the 
temptation to which he believed himself to have over- 
come, and which he even inculcated on posterity by the 
motto "Pactum serva" on his tomb— in his eyes justi- 
fied all the cruelty and oppression which marked his 
treatment of the Scots. Cruel it was, whatever allow- 
ances are to be made for the exaggeration of contempo- 
rary writers, or for the savageness of contemporary 
warfare. Yet it was not the bitter cruelty of the tyrant 
directed against the liberty of a free nation. 

Edward's death took place at Burgh-on-the Sands, in 
Cumberland, on the 7th of July, 1307. His character 
we have tried to draw in tracing the history of his acts. 
His work remains in the history of the country and the 
people whom he loved. 



CHAPTER XII. 

EDWARD II. 

Character of Edward II.— Piers Gaveston— The Ordinances- 
Thomas of Lancaster— The Despensers— The King's ruin and 
death. 
It is not often that a strong son succeeds a strong father, 
and where that is the case the result is not always salu- 
tary. If Edward I. had left a son like him- Reactionary 
self, a new fabric of despotism might have policy of 

_ - - , . - Edward II. 

been raised on the foundation of strong 
government which he had laid. Sometimes such alter- 
nations have worked well ; a weak administration 
following on a strong one has enabled the nation to 



264 The Early Plantage nets. A.D.1307 

advance all the more firmly and strongly for the disci, 
pline to which it has been subjected; and a strong reign 
following a weak one has taught them how to obtain 
from the strong successor the consolidation of reforms 
won from the weakness of the predecessor. But more 
commonly the result has been a simple reaction, and 
ihe weak son has had to bear the consequences of his 
father's exercise of power, the strong son has had to 
repair the mischief caused by his father's weakness. 
The case of Edward II., however, does not come exactly 
under either generalization. It was no mere reaction 
that caused his reign to stand in so strong contrast to 
his father's. Instead of following out his father's plans 
he reversed them ; and his fate was the penalty exacted 
by hatreds which he had drawn upon himself, not the 
result of a reaction upon a policy which he had inherited. 
He cast away at the beginning of the reign his father's 
friends, and he made himself enemies where he ought 
to have looked for friends, in his own household and 
within the narrowest circle of home. 

Edward II. was the fourth son of Edward I. and 

Eleanor. John, their eldest boy, had died in 1272 ; 

Henry, the next, died in 1274; Alfonso, the 

52es n and third, lived to be twelve years old, and died 

fevorites of i n I2 8c. Edward was born in 1284, at 

Edward II. J 

Carnarvon, became heir-apparent on his 
brother's death, and in 1301 was made Earl of Chester 
and Prince of Wales. Losing his mother in 1290, he 
was deprived of the early teaching which might have 
changed his whole history. His father, although he 
showed his characteristic care in directing the manage- 
ment of his son's household, in choosing his companions, 
and rebuking his faults, was far too busy to devote to 
him the personal supervision which would have trained 



a.d. 1307. Edward II. 265 

him for government and secured his affections. He 
grew up to dread rather than to love him, hating his 
father's ministers as spies and checks upon his plea- 
sures, and spending his time in amusements unbecoming 
a prince and a knight. His most intimate friend, Piers 
Gaveston, the son of an old Gascon servant of his 
father, had been assigned him by the King 
as his companion, and had gained a com- £ iers 

, , ' . „ b Gaveston. 

plete mastery over him. Gaveston was an 
accomplished knight, brave, ambitious, insolent and 
avaricious, like the foreign favorites of Henry III. 
Edward, although a handsome, strong lad, did not care 
to practice feats of arms or to follow the pursuits of war. 
He was fond of hunting and country life, averse to 
public labor, but splendid to extravagance in matters 
of feasting and tournament. He was indolent, careless 
about making new friends or enemies ; the only strong 
feeling which marked him was his obstinate champion- 
ship of the men whom he believed to be attached to 
himself. Edward was not a vicious man, but he was 
very foolish, idle, and obstinate, and there was nothing 
about him that served to counterbalance these faults or 
invite sympathy with him in his misfortunes. Edward 
I. some months before his death had found out this to 
his sorrow. He saw in the influence that Gaveston had 
won a sign that the scenes were to be repeated which, 
as he so well remembered, had marked the stormy 
period of his own youth He had banished Gaveston 
from court and made him swear not to return without 
his leave. No sooner was he dead than the favorite 
was recalled, and by his return began that series of mise- 
eries which overwhelmed himself first, and then his mas 
ter, and the consequences of which ran on in long succes- 
sion until the great house of Plantagenet came to an end. 

s 



266 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 307. 

Edward was absent when his father died, but within 
a few days he had rejoined the army, was received as 
king, without waiting for coronation, by the 
Scotland. English and Scottish lords, and proclaimed 

his royal peace. One of his father's last in- 
junctions, that he should promptly and persistently fol- 
low up the war, was set aside from the first ; Aymer de 
Valence was made commander and governor of Scot- 
land, and the king himself moved southwards. Another 
of his father's commands was set at nought directly 
after: Gaveston was recalled and raised to the earldom 
of Cornwall. Walter Langton, the late king's treasurer 
and chief minister, was removed from office and im- 
prisoned, and the chancellor also was displaced. Ed- 
ward I. was not yet buried, and his son's first parliament, 
called at Northampton, in October, 1307, was asked to 
provide money for the expenses of the funeral and the 
coronation ; for already it was said the favorite had got 
hold of the treasure and was sending it to his foreign 
kinsfolk. But the jealous nobles were not inclined to 
hurry matters as yet: the Parliament granted money; 
Edward I. was solemnly buried ; and orders were given 
to prepare for the coronation in February, 1308. 

The young king had been betrothed to Isabella of 
France, the daughter of Philip the Fair. He wished that 
Marriage of his young bride should be crowned with him, 
with Isabella an( l so crossed over to Boulogne to marry 
of France. \izx. The indignation of the lords and of the 

country at the recall and promotion of Gaveston was 
fanned into a flame by the announcement that, as it was 
necessary to appoint a regent during the king's short ab- 
sence, the Earl of Cornwall with full and even peculiar 
powers was appointed to the place. It became clear that 
the coronation could scarcely take place without an uproar. 



a.d. 1308. Edward II 267 

Nor was the question of coronation itself without some 
difficulties ; for Archbishop Winchelsey, although in- 
vited by the new king, had not yet returned 
from banishment, and it was by no means Th ? Cor<> 

' •' nation. 

safe for any other prelate to act in his 
stead. After a little delay Winchelsey consented to 
empower a substitute ; and Edward II. and Isabella 
were crowned on the 25th of February by the Bishop of 
Winchester. The form of the coronation oath taken on 
this occasion, perhaps for the first time in this shape, is 
worth careful remark. In it the king promises to main- 
tain the ancient laws, to keep the peace of 
God and the people, and to do right judg- ^n oat™"*" 
ment and justice. So much was found in 
the older formula: but another question was put : "Will 
you consent to hold and keep the laws and righteous 
customs which the community of your realm shall have 
chosen, and will you defend them and strengthen them 
to the honor of God, to the utmost of your power ?" If, 
as is supposed, these words were new, they seemed to 
contain a recognition of the fact that the community of 
the realm had now entered into their place as entitled to 
control by counsel and consent the legislative action and 
policy of the king. And so construed they form a valu- 
able comment on the results of the last reign, which had 
seen the community organized in a perfect parliament 
and admitted to a share of the responsibilities of govern- 
ment. The lords heard them with interest ; even if they 
had been used at the coronation of Edward I. few were 
old enough to remember them. They saw in them either 
an earnest of good government or a lever by which they 
themselves could remedy the evils of misgovernment, 
and they proceeded to try the maiden weapon against 
the favorite whom they now hated as well as feared. 



268 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1308. 

Gaveston had at first tried to propitiate the more pow- 
erful lords of the court, especially Earl Thomas of Lan- 
caster and Henry de Lacy, Earl of Lincoln. 

JfLSTcaSr 1 The latter was an old and trusted servant of 
Edward I. Thomas of Lancaster was the 
son of Earl Edmund of Lancaster, the younger son of 
Henry III., who had been titular King of Sicily; his 
mother was Blanche, the Queen Dowager of Navarre, 
whose daughter by her first husband had married Philip 
the Fair. He was thus cousin to the king and uncle to 
the queen ; he possessed the great estates with which his 
grandfather and uncle had founded the Lancaster earl- 
dom ; he was Earl of Leicester and Derby also, and had 
thus succeeded to the support of those vassals of the 
Montforts and the Ferrers who had sustained them in 
their struggle against the crown ; and he was the son-in 
law and heir of Henry de Lacy. Distantly following out 
the policy of Earl Simon, he had set himself up as a 
friend of the clergy and of the liberties of the people. 
Personally he was a haughty, vicious, and selfish man, 
whom the mistakes and follies of Edward II. raised into 
the fame of a popular champion, and whom his bitter 
sufferings and cruel death promoted to the rank of a 
martyr and a saint. But he was not a man of high prin- 
ciple or great capacity, as the result proved. 

No sooner had Gaveston made good his position than 

by his wanton insolence he incurred the hatred of Earl 

Thomas, and by the same folly provoked 

Gaveston and t h e animosity of the Earl of Pembroke, the 

the Earls. J 

king's cousin, of the Earl of Hereford, his 
brother-in-law, and of the strong and unscrupulous Earl 
of Warwick, Guy Beauchamp. Some of them he had 
defeated in a tournament ; nicknames he bestowed on 
all. One good friend Edward had tried to secure him ; 



a.d. 1309. Edward II 269 

he had married him to a sister of Earl Gilbert of Glou- 
cester, the king's nephew and their common playfellow ; 
but even Earl Gilbert only cared sufficiently for him to 
try to mediate in his favor ; he would not openly take 
his side. The storm rose steadily. Shortly after the 
coronation a great council was held in which his promo- 
tion was the chief topic of debate, and on the 18th of 
May he was banished. Edward tried to B anis hment of 
lighten the blow by appointing him lieuten- Gaveston. 
ant of Ireland, and besought the interposition of the 
King of France and the Pope in his favor. All the busi- 
ness of the kingdom was delayed by the Sch;sm be _ 
hostility of the king and the great lords, tween the king 
Money was wanted, and could be got only 
through the Italian bankers, whom the people looked on 
as extortioners. The divided Scots were left to fight 
their own battles. Such a state of things could not last 
long. Edward had to meet his parliament in April 1309. 
He wanted money, the country wanted reform, but the 
king desired the return of Gaveston even more than 
money, and the nation dreaded it more than they de- 
sired reform. When the estates met they presented to 
Edward a schedule of eleven articles : if these were 
granted they would grant money. The articles con- 
cerned several important matters ; the exaction of corn 
and other provisions by the king's agents under the 
name of purveyance, the maladministration of justice 
and usurped jurisdictions ; but the most important was 
one touching the imposts on wine, wool, and other mer- 
chandise which had been instituted by Edward I. in 
1303, after consultation with the merchants. Edward, 
however, thought little of the bearing of the request ; he 
proposed to agree to it if he might recall Gaveston. The 
Parliament refused to listen to him, and he adjourned 



270 The Early Plantagenets. a. D. 13 10. 

the discussion until July. Then in a session of the ba- 
ronage at Stamford he yielded the points in question, 
and received the promised subsidy. But he had already 
recalled Gaveston and by one means or another had ob- 
Recall of tained the tacit consent of all the great lords 

Gaveston. except the Earl of Warwick. Scarcely two 

months had elapsed when the storm rose again. The 
king summoned the earls to council. The Earl of Lan- 
caster refused to meet the Earl of Cornwall. Gradually 
the parties were re-formed as before, and the quarrel as- 
sumed larger dimensions. Gaveston was still the great 
offence, but the plan now broached by the lords extended 
to the whole administrative work of the kingdom. 

At the parliament which met in March 1310 a hew 

scheme of reform was promulgated, which was framed on 

the model of that of 1258 and the Provisions 

Parliament f Oxford. It was determined that the task of 
01 1 3 10. 

regulating the affairs of the realm and of the 
king's household should be committed to an elective body 
of twenty-one members, or Ordainers, the chief of whom 
was Archbishop Winchelsey. Both parties were repre- 
sented, the royal party by the earls of Gloucester, Pem- 
broke, and Richmond, the opposition by the earls of 
Lincoln, Lancaster, Hereford, Warwick, and Arundel. 
But the preponderance both in number and influence 
was against Gaveston. They were empowered to remain 
in office until Michaelmas 131 1, and to make ordinances 
for the good of the realm agreeable to the tenor of 
the king's coronation oath. The whole administration 
of the kingdom thus passed into their hands ; and 
Edward, seeing himself superseded, joined the army now 
engaged in war with Scotland, and in company with 
Gaveston continued on the border until the Ordainers 
were ready to report. During this time the Earl of 



A.D. 1-3 ti. Edward II. 271 

Lincoln, who had been left as regent, died and the 
Earl of Gloucester took his place. The Ordainers 
immediately on their appointment issued six articles 
directing the observance of the charters, the careful 
collection of the customs, and the arrest of the foreign 
merchants ; but the great body of the ordinances was 
reserved for the parliament which met in August 131 1. 

The famous document or statute known as the Ordi- 
nances of 131 1 contained forty-one clauses, all aimed at 
existing abuses. Some of these abuses were 
old long-standing evils, such as the miscar- nances of 
riage and delay of justice, the misconduct of I3 "* 
officials, and the maladministration and misapplication 
of royal property. Others were founded on the policy of 
the late reign, which Edward's ministers had perverted 
and abused ; the Ordainers had no hesitation in declaring 
the customs duties established by Edward I. to be illegal 
and contrary to the charter. But two classes of enact- 
ments are of more special interest. Four whole clauses 
were devoted to the punishment of the favorite and 
of those courtiers who had cast in their lot with him. 
Gaveston had stolen the king's heart from his people, 
and led him into every sort of tyranny and dishonesty ; 
the Lord Henry de Beaumont, to whom Edward had 
given the Isle of Man, and the lady de Vescy, his sister, 
were little better; the Friscobaldij the Italian bankers 
who received the customs, were the enemies of the peo- 
ple and mere instruments of oppression. Gaveston was 
to be banished for life, Beaumont to be expelled from 
the council, and the Friscobaldi to be sent home. Not 
content with this, the Ordainers further enacted some 
very important limitations on the king's power. All the 
great officers of state were to be appointed with the coun- 
sel and consent of the baronage, and to be sworn in par- 



272 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 131 1. 

liament-, the king was not go to war or to quit the king- 
dom without the consent of the barons in parliament ; 
parliaments were to be called every year, and the king's 
servants were to be brought to justice. The articles 
thus seem to sum up not only the old and new 
grievances, but the ideas of government entertained by 
the Ordainers : they are to punish the favorite, to remedy 
the points in which the charter has failed, and to restrain 
the power of the king. The power is only transferred 
from the king to the barons. There is no provision 
Control of analogous to the principle laid down by Ed- 
the king by ward I., that the whole nation shall join in 

the barons. m J 

the tasks and responsibilities of national 
action. The baronage, not the three estates in parlia- 
ment, are to admonish, to restrain, to compel the king. 

Edward, after such a struggle as he could make to 
save Gaveston — a matter which was to him far more im- 
portant than any of the legal questions in- 
T ilt st i™ ggle volved in the Ordinances — consented that 

of the king 

in favor of they should become a law, intending per- 

Gaveston. , . . 

haps to obtain absolution when it was 
needed, or to allege that his consent was given under 
compulsion. He went back into the North, was re- 
joined by Gaveston, and after some short consideration 
annulled the ordinances which were made against him. 
The barons immediately on hearing of this prepared to 
enforce the law in arms. Winchelsey excommunicated 
the favorite ; the king left no means untried to save him. 
After a narrow escape at Newcastle, where he lost his 
baggage and the vast collection of jewels which he had 
accumulated, many of them belonging to the hereditary 
hoard of the crown, Gaveston was besieged in Scarbo- 
rough Castle. In May, 1312, he surrendered, and was 
conducted by the Earl of Pembroke into the South, to 



a.d. 131 2. Edward II 273 

await his sentence in parliament. His enemies, how- 
ever, were too impatient to wait for justice. The Earl 
of Warwick carried him off whilst Pembroke was off his 
guard, and he was beheaded in the presence of the 
Earl of Lancaster. It is more easy to ac- 
count for than to justify the hatred which Gaveston 
the earls felt towards Gaveston. His con- 
duct had been offensive, his influence was no doubt 
dangerous, but the actual mischief done by him had 
been small ; neither he nor Edward had exercised 
power with sufficient freedom as yet to merit such a 
punishment, and no policy of mere caution or appre- 
hension could excuse the cruelty of the act. It was a 
piece of vile personal revenge, for insults which any 
really great man would have scorned to avenge. 

From the time of Gaveston' s death the unhappy king- 
remained for some years the sport or tool of contending 
parties. He was indeed incompetent to change in 
reign alone, or to choose ministers who Nation" 1 '™' 
could rule in his name. The Earl of Pem- 
broke, Aymer de Valence, the son of that William of 
Lusignan, Henry III.'s half-brother, who was banished 
in 1258, first attempted to take the reins. Walter 
Langton had made his peace and become treasurer 
again ; and on the death of Archbishop Winchelsey, in 
1 31 3, Walter Reynolds, the king's old tutor and present 
chancellor, became primate. But these were not men to 
withstand the great weight of the opposition. Thomas 
of Lancaster, who on the death of Henry de Lacy had 
added the earldoms of Lincoln and Salisbury to the three 
which he already held, treated on equal terms with the 
king as a belligerent. The mediation of the clergy 
brought the two together at the close of 1312, and in the 
autumn of 131 3 a general pacification was brought about, 



274 Th e Earty Phintagenets. A.D.1314. 

followed by an amnesty and a liberal supply of money 
in Parliament. The Ordinances were recognized as the 
law of the land ; the birth of an heir to the crown was 
hailed as a good omen, and better hopes were enter- 
tained for the future. The war with Scotland was to be 
resumed, and with secure peace order in the government 
must follow. 

The Scots had been indeed left alone too long. Short 

truces, desultory warfare, the defeat of any spasmodic 

effort on the part of the English by a deter- 

ofRobert mined policy on the Scottish side of evading 

Bruce in battle, had resulted in a great increase of 

Scotland. ' ° 

strength in the hands of Robert Bruce. He 
had taken advantage of the domestic troubles of Eng- 
land, to recover one by one the strongholds of his king- 
dom. It is believed that he had intrigued both with 
Gaveston and with Lancaster. The Castle of Linlithgow 
came into his hands in 131 1, Perth in 1312, Roxburgh 
and Edinburgh in 131 3. Stirling, almost the only fortress 
left in the hands of the English, was besieged, and had 
promised to surrender if not relieved before midsummer 
1 314. Edward prepared to take the command of his 
forces and to raise the siege. But it was no part of 
Lancaster's policy to support him. Taking advantage 
of the article of the Ordinances which forbade the king to 
go to war without the consent of the baronage in Parlia- 
ment, he declined to obey the summons to war until 
Parliament had spoken. Edward protested that there 
was no time ; Lancaster and his confederate earls stood 
aloof. The King and Pembroke, with such of the barons 
as they could influence, and a great host of English 

warriors, who had no confidence in their 

Battle of ' - 

Bannock- commander, met the Scots at Bannockburn, 

on the 24th of June, and were shamefully de- 



a.d. 1316-18. Edward II 275 

feated. Edward lost all control over the country in 
consequence. The young Earl of Gloucester, whose ad- 
hesion had been a tower of strength to him, fell in the 
battle ; the Earl of Pembroke, who had fled with him, 
shared the contempt into which he fell. Lancaster was 
practically supreme ; he and his fellows, the survivors of 
the Ordainers, appointed and displaced ministers, put 
the king on an allowance, and removed his personal 
friends and attendants as they chose. In 1316 Lancaster 
was chosen official president of the royal council ; he 
was already commander-in-chief of the army. He now 
sought the support of the clergy, forced the king to order 
the execution of the Ordinances, and con- Despotism 
ducted himself as an irresponsible ruler. ofLancaster. 
But he had not a capacity equal to his ambition, and his 
greed of power served to expose his real weakness. He 
acted as a clog upon all national action ; he would not 
act with the king, for he hated him ; he dared: not act 
without him, lest his own failure should give his rivals 
the chance of overthrowing him. The country, notwith- 
standing his personal popularity, was miserable under 
him. The Scots plundered and ravaged as they chose. 
He would not engage in war. He would not attend parlia- 
ment or council. The court became filled with intrigue. 
The barons split up into parties ; Edward, rejoicing in 
the removal of control, launched into extravagant ex- 
penditure, and began to form a new party of his own. 
With general anarchy it is no wonder that private war 
broke out, or that private war assumed the dimensions 
of public war. The Countess of Lancaster was carried 
off from her husband ; the Earl of Warenne 
was accused, and the king was suspected Earls he 
of conniving at the elopement. The earls 
went to war. Edward forbade Lancaster to stir, and 



276 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 131 8- 19. 

Lancaster of course disobeyed the order. In the midst 
of all this Robert Bruce, in April 13 18, took Berwick. 

There were now three parties in the kingdom. Lan- 
caster had lost ground, but the king had gained none. 
The Earl of Pembroke had been gradually 
Conflict of alienated, and now aimed at acquiring 

parties. ' *■ ° 

power for himself. The death of the Earl 
of Gloucester had left his earldom to be divided between 
the husbands of his three sisters, Hugh le Despenser, 
Roger d'Amory, and Hugh of Audley. The division of 
the great estates was in itself sufficient to create a new 
division of parties. D'Amory and Pembroke framed a 
league for gaining influence over the king in conjunc- 
tion with Sir Bartholomew Badlesmere, a bitter enemy 
of Lancaster. Hugh le Despenser, the father of the one 
just mentioned, took on himself to reform the king's 
personal party, and was aided by the few barons and 
bishops whom Edward had been strong enough to pro- 
mote. The capture of Berwick had one salutary effect : 
it stopped the private war, and shamed the three parties 
Eff f into a compromise ; but the compromise 

the loss of was itself a proof of common weakness. It 

was concluded in August, 131 8, between 
Lancaster alone on his own part, and ten bishops and 
fourteen temporal lords as sureties for the king. It pro- 
vided a new form of council — eight bishops, four earls, 
and four barons ; one other member was to be nomi- 
nated by Lancaster, who did not deign to accept a seat. 
But this constitution had no more permanence than the 
former. The official preponderance was maintained by 
Pembroke and Badlesmere, and they could do nothing 
whilst the Earl of Lancaster continued to stand aloof. 
Edward in 1319 made a vain attempt to recover Ber- 
wick, but only gave the Scots an opportunity of evading 



a.d. 1319- Edward II 277 

Yorkshire, and matters grew worse and worse. Men 
could not help seeing that even Edward himself could 
not mismanage matters more than they were being now 
mismanaged, and that, whether incapable or no, he had 
never yet had a chance of showing what capacity he 
had. 

The fate of Gaveston might have warned any who 
counted on acquiring power by Edward's favor, and in 
fact for several years he remained unbur- 
dened and uncomforted bv a confidential New favorites 

. Of the king. 

servant. But the waning popularity of Lan- 
caster seemed now to render the position of the king's 
friend less hazardous, and an aspirant was found in the 
younger Hugh le Despenser. He was the grandson of 
that Hugh le Despenser, the justiciar of the baronial 
government, who had fallen with Simon de Montfort at 
Evesham. His father, now the elder Hugh, had been 
a courtier and minister of Edward L, and had been 
throughout the early troubles of the reign faithful to 
Edward II., but he was regarded as a deserter by the 
barons and had a bitter personal enemy in the Earl of 
Lancaster. Father and son were alike ambitious and 
greedy ; they showed little regard for either 
the person or the reputation of their master, The Des " 

and sacrificed his interest whenever it came 
in competition with their own. The younger Hugh, like 
Piers Gaveston, was married to one of the heiresses of 
Gloucester, and had been appointed in 13 18 chamber- 
lain to the king under the government of compromise. 
Edward in his weakness and isolation clung tenaciously 
to these men; they had inherited some of the political 
ideas of the barons of 1258, and had perhaps an indis- 
tinct notion of overthrowing the influence of Lancaster 
by an alliance with the commons. The younger Hugh, 



278 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 131 9-21. 

at all events, from time to time uttered sentiments con- 
cerning the position of the king which were inconsistent 
with the theory of absolute royalty ; he had said that the 
allegiance sworn to the king was due to the crown rather 
than to the person of the sovereign, and that if the king 
inclined to do wrong it was the duty of the liegeman to 
compel him to do right. Another part of the programme 
of the Despensers involved a more distinct recognition 
of the right of parliament than had ever been put forth 
by Lancaster, and it would seem probable that they 
hoped by maintaining the theory of national action, as 
stated by Edward I., to strengthen their master's posi- 
tion, and through it to strengthen their own. So low, 
however, was the political morality of the time, that the 
same selfish objects were hidden under widely different 
professions. The Despensers had sadly miscalculated 
the force of the old prejudice against court favorites, and 
did not see how every step in advance made them new 
enemies. The Earl of Lancaster saw in their unpopu- 
larity a chance of recovering his place as a national 
champion, and a quarrel among the coheirs of Gloucester 
gave the opportunity for an outcry. Hugh of Audley, 
who had married Piers Gaveston's widow, and who was 
therefore a rival and brother-in-law of Hugh le Despen- 
ser, showed some signs of contumacious conduct in the 
marches. The Earl of Hereford and Roger Mortimer, 
the Lord of Wigmore, declined to join in the measures 
necessary to reduce him to order, and refused to meet 
the Despensers in council ; and in a parliament which 
the king called to meet on the 15th of July, 1321, the 
whole baronage turned against the favorites. Their 
attempts to influence the king, their greedy use of the 
king's name for their own purposes, the rash words of 
the younger Hugh, the vast acquisitions of his father, 



AD. 1322. Edward II. 279 

their unauthorized interference in the administration of 
government, and their perversion of justice were alleged 
as demanding condign punishment. 

The Earl of Hereford, Edward's brother-in-law, made 
the charge before the three estates, and the lords, 
"peers of the land," as they now perhaps s nce 
for the first time called themselves, passed against the 

.Despensers. 

the sentence of forfeiture and exile on the 
two. They were not to be recalled except by consent of 
parliament, and a separate act was passed to ensure the 
immunity of the prosecutors and the pardon of those 
who had taken up arms to overthrow them. This was 
Lancaster's last triumph, and it was very short-lived. In 
the month of October the Lady Badlesmere shut the 
gates of Leeds Casde against the queen, and Edward 
raised a force to avenge the insult offered to his wife. 
All the earls of his party joined him, and the Earl of 
Lancaster, who hated Badlesmere for his old rivalry, did 
not interfere to protect him. Finding himself for the 
first time at the head of a sufficient force, the king de- 
termined to enforce order in the marches and to avenge 
his friends the Despensers. He marched against the 
border castles of the Earl of Hereford, Audley, and 
D'Amory. On receiving news of this Lancaster at once 
discovered his mistake, and called a meeting of his 
party-the good lords, as they were called— at Don- 
caster. Both parties showed great energy, but the king 
had got the start. He obtained from the convocation of 
the clergy of Canterbury, under the influence of the 
archbishop, his old tutor, a declaration that the sentence 
against the Despensers was illegal, and lost ^ 
no time in forcing his way towards Here- between the 
ford to punish the earl who had procured it. ^"barons. 
On his way he defeated the Mortimers. He 



280 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1322. 

took Hereford ; and having reached Gloucester in tri- 
umph, on the nth of February, recalled his friends to 
his side. Lancaster and his party were not idle, but 
they underrated the importance of the crisis and divided 
their forces. One part was sent to secure the king's 
castle of Tickhill, the other, under Lancaster himself, 
moved slowly towards the south. Edward, in the hope 
of intercepting the latter division, moved northwards 
from Cirencester, and the earl, when he reached Burton- 
on-Trent, did not venture any farther. On the news of 
his flight his castles of Kenilworth and Tutbury surren- 
dered, and Edward started in pursuit. The unfortunate 
earl had reached Boroughbridge on his way to his cas- 
tle of Dunstanburgh, with his enemies close behind 
him, when he learned that his way was blocked by Sir 
Andrew Harclay, the governor of Carlisle, who was 
coming to meet the king. A battle ensued, 
Borough- in which the Earl of Hereford was slain, the 

forces of Lancaster were defeated, and the 
earl himself forced to surrender. He was taken on the 
17th of March, and on the 22nd was tried by the king's 
judges, in the presence of the hostile earls, in his own 
castle of Pomfret. He was condemned as a traitor 
Evidence of his intrigues with the Scots was adduced to 
give color to the sentence, and he was beheaded at 
once. So the blood of Gaveston was 
of Lancas- avenged, and the tide of savage cruelty be- 
gan to flow in a broader stream, to be 
avenged, like Lamech, seventy and sevenfold. At once 
the people, hating the Despensers and misdoubting Ed- 
ward, declared that the martyr of Pomfret was worthy 
TT , . of canonization ; miracles were wrought at 

Ulterior _ ' ° 

consequences his tomb ; it was a task worthy of heroes 

of the ex- , . - . , , TT . 

ecution. and patriots to avenge his death. His name 



a.d. 1323. Edward II. 281 

became a watchword of liberty ; the influence which 
he had labored to build up became a rival interest 
to that of the crown. First, Edward II. and the De- 
spensers fell before it ; then, in the person of Henry 
IV., the heir of Lancaster swept from the throne the 
heir of Edward's unhappy traditions. In the next cen- 
tury the internecine struggle of the Roses wore out the 
force of the impulse, and yet enough was left to stain 
from time to time the scaffolds of the Tudors, long after 
the last male heir of the Plantagenets had perished. 

Some few of the other hostile barons perished in the 
first flush of the triumph ; Badlesmere, in particular, 
was taken and hanged. Roger D'Amory 
was dead. The Audleys were spared, the Ordinances 
About thirty were put to death ; many were 
imprisoned ; many more paid fines or forfeitures which 
helped to enrich the Despensers. Edward was now su- 
preme, and took, as might be expected, the opportunity 
to undo all that his enemies had tried to do. In his first 
parliament, held at York, six weeks after the battle, he 
procured the revocation of the Ordinances, and an im- 
portant declaration on the part of the assembled estates 
that from henceforth " matters to be established for the 
estate of our lord the king and of his heirs, and for the 
estate of the realm and of the people, shall be treated, 
accorded, and established in parliaments by our lord the 
king and by the consent of the prelates, earls and 
barons, and commonalty of the realm, according as hath 
been hitherto accustomed." No ordinances were to be 
made any more like the Ordinances of 131 1. The de- 
claration, intended to secure the crown from the control 
of the barons, enunciates the theory of constitutional 
government. And thus the Despensers tried to turn the 
tables against their foes. But although they determined 

T 



282 The Early Piantageiiets. a.d. 1323. 

to annul the Ordinances they did not venture to with- 
draw the material benefits which the Ordinances had se- 
cured. The king, immediately after the revocation, re- 
issued in the form of an ordinance of his own some of 
the most beneficial provisions ; and the parliament re- 
sponded by reversing the acts against the favorites and 
granting money for defence against the Scots. 

It was indeed high time, for such had been the 
course of recent events that the attitude of the two 
. kingdoms were reversed, and England 

of Edward seemed more likely to become tributary to 
North. Scotland than to exercise sovereignty over it. 

Edward's campaign, was, however, as usual 
unsuccessful. He narrowly escaped capture amongst 
the Yorkshire hills, and the whole county was in such 
alarm that he found it scarcely possible to hold a par- 
liament at York. Nor did his troubles end there. 
Early in the following year he found that Sir Andrew 
Harclay, whom he had just made Earl of Carlisle, was 
negotiating treasonably with Robert Bruce ; he was 
taken, condemned, and executed. Well might the 
unhappy king throw himself more desperately than ever 
on the support of the Despensers, for he knew none 
others, even of those who had served him best or 
whom he had most richly rewarded, who were not ready 
to turn and betray him. With the Despensers he was 
safe, for they, he was sure, could only stand with him and 
must fall when he fell. One thing, however, he did, in 
itself wise and just — concluding with Scotland a truce for 
thirteen years. This was done in May 1323. Prudent as 
it was, it alienated from him the adventurers who like 
Henry de Beaumont were intent on carving 
Scotland. out for themselves counties in conquered 

Scotland. Everything was interpreted in the 



a.d. 1324. Edward II 283 

worst sense against him ; the men who refused to follow 
him to war cried out against the peace ; and the men who 
had followed him to war deserted him. Thus when he at 
last found himself without a rival in the kingdom, it 
seemed as if he were left alone to discover how great 
depths of abasement were still to be sounded; new 
calamities which, whoever really caused them, seemed 
to result from his own incapacity. In truth, partly owing 
to Edward's neglect of the duty of a king, and partly 
owing to the inveterate animosities following on the 
death of Lancaster, the tide of public and private hatred 
was too high to be long resisted. Yet the last impulse 
came from a quarter from which it might have been 
least expected and from which it was certainly least 
deserved. 

Edward, with all his faults, had been a kind husband 
and father ; but he had trusted his wife less implicitly 
than she desired to be trusted. In this he 

r 1 1 1 Position 

was justified by the fact of her close rela- and policy 
tionship to the Earl of Lancaster, and still ° u ^ 
more by the jealousy which she displayed to- 
wards his confidential ministers. Not only the Despensers 
but Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, the Treasurer, and Bal- 
dock, the Chancellor, were the objects of her settled aver- 
sion ; and she lent a ready ear to all who fancied that these 
men had injured them or stood in the way of their ad- 
vancement. The court contained many such men, who 
were ambitious of becoming ministers of state or bishops 
and ready to take either side for gain ; men who hated 
the Despensers, and who saw their own prospects 
blighted by the fall of Lancaster. Regularly, as the 
tide had turned, as the king or the Ordainers had 
gained or lost, the great offices of state had changed 
hands, and there was all the grudging, all the personal 



284 The Early Planiagenets. a.d. 1325 

animosities, which in later ages appear to be inseparable 
from government by party. 

The events which followed the peace with Scotland 
brought these influences more strongly into play. The 
shadows gathered rapidly round the miserable king 
almost from that hour. The constitutional struggle had 
ceased. The death of the Earl of Lancaster had rid the 
Despensers of their most dangerous rival, 
Arrogance™ 1 the revocation of the Ordinances had left the 
of the Des- government in their hands, and the death of 

pensers. ° 

the Earl of Pembroke in 1 324 left them with- 
out competitors. The elder Hugh, now made Earl of Win- 
chester, set no limit to his acquisitiveness; he was an old 
man, and might have considered that it would be more 
conducive to his son's welfare to make friends than to 
multiply estates. The younger Hugh, himself a man of 
mature years, was made, by his violence and pride, even 
more conspicuous than his father. Henry of Lancas- 
ter, the brother and heir of Earl Thomas, was reduced to 
practical insignificance by the detention of his brother's 
estates in the king's hands ; and although the Despensers 
sought to purchase his services, and he had no personal 
dislike to the king, he could not be regarded as a safe 
and sound pillar of the falling state. The ministers 
Baldock and Stapleton were faithful men, but neither 
wise enough to counteract nor strong enough to guide 
the policy of the favorites. 

Philip V. died in January, 1322, and the homage of 

Edward for the provinces of Ponthieu and Gascony was 

forthwith demanded for his successor, 

toEoVard Charles IV. A series of negotiations fol- 

f° do lowed which early in 1324 led to a peremp- 

homage to ...... 

the new tory summons and a threat of forfeiture, no 

king. indistinct prelude to war. Edward might 



a.d. 1325. Edward II 285 

easily have crossed over to his brother-in-law's court, 
as he had done more than once before, but the 
Despensers would not allow it. They dared not suffer 
him to escape from their direct control, they dared not 
accompany him ; if he left them in England they knew 
their doom. The French court too was filled with their 
enemies ; Roger Mortimer, the lord of Wigmore, who 
had been taken prisoner in 1322, had escaped from the 
Tower and gone to France. Henry of Lancaster was 
waiting to supplant them at home. War was the only 
alternative. Still negotiations proceeded. First Pem- 
broke was sent ; he died on the mission ; then Edmund 
of Kent, the king's half-brother; he failed to obtain 
terms. The king's most trusted chaplains were sent to 
the Pope; but they spent their labor and treasure in 
securing their own promotion. At last in 1325 the queen 
went over. She parted apparently on the 
best terms with both Edward and the ^X'qulen 
Despensers, and continued in friendly cor- for France, 

f ' -ill followed by 

respondence until she had prevailed on the that of 
king to send over his eldest son. It was Edward, 
arn nged that the provinces should be 
made over to him and that he should do the homage. 
This was done in September, 1325, and almost imme- 
diately afterwards she threw off the mask. How long 
she had worn it we cannot tell. Possibly she left Ed- 
ward in good faith and fell on her arrival in France into 
the hands of those who were embittered against him ; 
possibly she was a conspirator long before. Anyhow 
the tie to the king, which could be so easily broken, 
could not, in the case of either mother or son, have been 
a strong one. As early as December the king was warned 
that Isabella and Edward would not return to him. 
Quickly she gathered round her all whom the king 



286 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1326. 

had cause to fear. Roger Mortimer, whether by reason 
T . f of passion or of policy, gained complete as- 
Isabeiia cendency over her- The young Edward was 

instructed that it was his duty to deliver his 
father out of the hands of the Despensers or to deliver 
England out of the hand of Edward. Edmund of Kent, 
the king's brother, was persuaded to join, and the con- 
spirators, if not actually supported by promises from 
England, were too willing to believe that to be victorious 
they had only to show themselves. As the French king 
was slow to commit himself, Isabella contracted an al- 
liance with the Count of Hainault, and obtained money 
from the Italian bankers. They furnished supplies, the 
count furnished men and ships. 

Edward knew all this, but he knew not how to meet 

it. In vain he summoned parliaments that would 

do nothing when they met, and ordered 

Helplessness musters that would not meet at all. He 

01 the king. 

found that all whom he trusted deceived 
him ; that, except the Despensers and the two detested 
ministers, none even pretended to support him ; and 
that he was obliged to depend on the very men who had 
the most to avenge. At last Isabella landed, on Sep- 
tember, 24, 1326, on the coast of Suffolk, proclaiming 

herself the avenger of the blood of Lan- 

Landingof Isa- ° 

beiia on the caster and the sworn foe of the favorites. 

coast of Suffolk, t-., ,'., . T , .-J, r. • 

Edward, who was in London, tried to obtain 
help from the citizens, and prevailed on the bishops to 
excommunicate the invaders. But early in October he 
fled into the West, where he thought the Despensers 
were strong ; on the 1 5th the Londoners rose and mur- 
dered the treasurer ; Archbishop Reynolds retired into 
Kent and began to make terms with the queen. 

She in the meantime moved on in triumph ; Henry 



a.d. 1327. Edward II 287 

of Lancaster, the king's brothers, the earls, save Arundel 
and Warenne, the bishops almost to a man, _ 

. . . . . Triumphant 

joined her either in person or with effective march of isa- 
help. Adam Orlton, the Bishop of Here- West of Eng- 
ford, who had been the confidential friend land * 
of Bohun, and Henry Burghersh, the Bishop of Lincoln, 
the nephew of Badlesmere, led the councils of aggres- 
sion. They advanced by Oxford to attack Bristol, 
where they expected to find Edward and the Earl of 
Winchester. On October 26 the queen reached Bristol, 
but her husband had gone into Wales and was attempt- 
ing to escape to Ireland. The capture of 
Bristol, however, was the closing event of 
his reign. The Earl of Winchester was hanged forth- 
with. The young Edward was declared by the lords on 
the spot guardian of the kingdom, and he summoned a 
parliament to meet in his father's absence. The king, 
with Hugh le Despenser and Baldock, were taken on 
November 16; on the 17th the Earl of Arundel was be- 
headed at Hereford ; on the 24th Hugh le Despenser 
was hanged, drawn and quartered at the same place. 
The parliament was to settle the fate of the king, and 
the parliament met at Westminster on Tanu- _ 

x r n t Overthrow and 

ary 7. There matters were formally dis- deposition of 
cussed, but the conclusion was, as all the 
world knew, foregone. Even if any had thought that, 
now that the country was rid of the Despensers, the 
king might be allowed to reign on, the dread of the 
London mob and of the armed force which Mortimer 
brought up silenced them. The wretched archbishop 
declared that the voice of the people was the voice of 
God. Bishop Orlton, professing to believe that if the 
king were released the queen's life would not be safe, 
insisted that the parliament should choose between 



288 The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1327 

father and son. Bishop Stratford of Winchester, who 
led the Lancaster party and had no love for Mortimer, 
drew the articles on which the sentence of renunciation 
was founded. The king, he said, was incompetent or 
too indolent to judge between right and wrong ; he had 
obstinately refused the advice of the wise and listened 
to evil counsel ; he had lost Ireland, Seotland, and Gas- 
cony, he had injured the Church, oppressed the barons, 
he had broken his coronation oath, and he was ruining 
the land. After some debate the articles were placed 
before the unhappy king, who confessed that they were 
true and that he was not worthy to reign. On January 
20 he resigned the crown and the parliament renounced 
their allegiance and set his son in his place. For eight 
months longer he dragged on a miserable life, of which 
but little is known. Men told sad stories of suffering 
and insult which after his death provoked his kinsmen 
to avenge him, but none interfered to save him now. 
The reign of Mortimer and Isabella was a reign of ter- 
ror ; and before the terror abated Edward 
Ed rde d II was mur dered. The place of his death, the 
Castle of Berkeley, and the date, September 
21, are known. Henry of Lancaster, who was at first 
appointed to guard him, had treated him too well. His 
new keepers, either prompted by the queen and Mortimer 
or anxious to win a reward, slew him in some secret 
way. And thus ended a reign full of tragedy, a life 
that may be pitied but affords no ground for sympathy. 
Strange infatuation, unbridled vindictiveness, reckless- 
ness beyond belief, the breach of all natural affection, 
of love, of honor, and loyalty, are here ; but there is 
none who stands forth as a hero. There are great sins 
and great falls and awful vengeances, but nothing to 
admire, none to be praised 



a.d. 1327. Edward II. 289 

So the son of the great king Edward perished ; and 
with a sad omen the first crowned head 
went down before the offended nation ; with *ad32dj- 
a sad omen, for it was not done in calm or canceofthe 
righteous judgment. The unfaithful wife, Edward II. 
the undutiful son, the vindictive prelate, the 
cowardly minister were unworthy instruments of a 
nation's justice. 

Such as it is, however, the reign of Edward II. is 
chiefly important as a period of transition. It winds up 
much that was left undone by his father ; it is the seed- 
time of the influences which ripened under his son. The 
constitutional acts of 1309, 1310 and 131 1 are the supple- 
ment to those of 1297 ; the tragedy of Piers Gaveston 
and Earl Thomas is the primary cause of much of the 
personal history that follows. So, too, the reign closes 
the great interest of Scottish warfare, and contains the 
germ of the long struggle with France. But viewed by 
itself its tragic interest is the greatest ; and it is rich in 
moral and material lessons. It tells us that the greatest 
sin for which a king can be brought to account is not 
personal vice or active tyranny, but the dereliction of 
kingly duty ; the selfish policy which treats the nation as 
if it were made for him, not he for the nation. It is the 
greatest sin and the greatest folly, for it at once draws 
down the penalty and leaves the sinner incapable of 
avoiding it or resisting it; it leaves the nation to be 
oppressed by countless tyrants, and is by so much worse 
than the tyranny of one. It allows the corruption of 
justice at the fountain's head. 

So we close a long and varied epoch. The sum of 
its influences and results must be read in the history of 
the following age, in which, in many important points, 
the reign of Richard II. repeats the tragedy of Edward 



290 



The Early Plantagenets. a.d. 1327. 



Constitu- 
tional re- 
sults of the 
epoch 

closing with 
his down- 
fall. 



II. ; and the struggles of York and Lan- 
caster consummate the series of events 
which begin at Warwick and at Pomfret ; 
in which the constitution that we have 
seen organized and consolidated under 
Henry II. and Edward I. is tested to the utmost, strained 
and bent and warped, but still survives to remedy the 
tyranny of the Tudors and overthrow the factitious ab- 
solutism of the Stewarts. 



INDEX. 



BAL 

A CCURSI, Francesco, 221 
±\ Acre, siege of, 116 ; the English 
"" at, 118 ; doable siege at, 118 ; taken, 
, 120 

Adeliza, queen, 95 
Adrian IV., pope, 30, 46 
Alexander III., pope, 3, 71, 92 
Alexander IV., pope, 186 
Alexander, Bishop of Lincoln, 21 
Alfonso, King of Castile, 99 
Alnwick, battle of, 96 
Amalric, Count of Montfort, 193 
Amiens, council at, 202 
Amory, Roger d', 278; his death, 

281 r r. -^ 

Anarchy in the reign of Stephen, 22 

Anglo-Saxon militia system, 88 

Anjou, house of, at Jerusalem, 104 ; 

loss of, 142 
Anselm, 63 

Aquitaine, feudal rights of, 51 
Archbishops, disputed election of, at 

Canterbury, 145 
Arthur, grandson of Henry II., 125 ; 

his claims to the throne, 136 ; his 

claims in France, 140 ; murder of, 

142 
Arundel, earl of, 95 
Ascalon rebuilt, 121 
Audley, Hugh of, 278 
Aumale, William of, 45 
Azai, conference at, 109 

BADLESMERE, Sir Bartholo- 
mew, 278 ; his death, 281 
Badlesmere, Lady, 279 
Baldock, chancellor, 283 
Baldwin, Archbishop of Canterbury, 

116 
Baldwin of Redvers, 18 



BEC 

Baldwin the Leper, 104 
Balliol, John, made king of Scotland, 
241 ; summoned by Edward I., 
257; at war with Edward I., 258; 
surrender of, 258 
Bannockburn, battle of, 277 
Barbarossa, Frederick, 37 
Barons, disputes with, 151; refuse 
to serve under John, 153; their 
appeal to the laws of Henry I., 
154 ; their quarrels with John, 156 ; 
granting of the Magna Carta by 
John, 157 ; their long list of griev- 
ances, 197, 198 ; disunion among, 
200 ; the differences with the king 
referred to arbitration, 201 ; refuse 
to abide by the decision, 202, 203 ; 
victory of, at the battle of Lewes, 
205; defeated at Evesham, 209; 
their discontent under the growth 
of the royal power, 248 ; assembly 
of, at Salisbury, 249; control of 
Edward II. by, 273; at war with 
Edward II., 279 
Barons' War, the, 202 
Battles, Alnwick, 96; Bannockburn, 
277 ; Boroughbridge, 280 , Bouvines, 
155; Consilt, 48; Dunbar, 258; 
Evesham, 208; Lewes, 205; Lin- 
coln, 23, 169 ; Standard, 19 
Bavaria, 8 . 

Beauchamp, Guy, Earl of Warwick, 

270 
Beaumont, Henry de, 273 
Becket, Thomas, 30 ; appointed chan- 
cellor, 42; at the siege of Tou- 
louse, 53 ; his early life, 66 ; rises 
into note, 66 ; as chancellor, 66 ; 
becomes archbishop of Canterbury, 
67 ; Henry's confidence in him, 
67 ; resigns the chancery, 70 ; en« 

?9I 



292 



Index. 



BUR 

forces the feudal rights of his see, 
70 ; opposes the king on a finan- 
cial point, 72 ; his new enemies, 
74 ; quarrels with Henry II,, 75 ; 
defends the clerical immunities, 
75 ; his conduct regarding the Con- 
stitutions of Clarendon, 77; is 
summoned to Northampton, 78; 
his trial, 78 ; his flight, 79 ; is 
exiled, 79 ; under the protection 
of Lewis VII., 79 ; his interviews 
with the king, 80; reconciliatiou 
with Henry il., 82 ; returns to 
England, 82 ; murder of, 82 ; the 
true glory of, 83 ; pilgrimage to his 
grave, 96 

Berengaria, Princess of Navarre, her 
marriage with Richard I., 120 

Berksted, Stephen, 216 

Berwick sacked by Edward I., 258 ; 
capture of, by the Scotch, 277 

Bibars, Sultan, 215 

Bigot, Hugh, 13, 14, 18, 31, 46, 93, 
199 

Bigot, Roger, Earl of Norfolk, 248 

Bishops, indemnity for their losses 
caused by John, 154 

Bishops, Norman, 63 

Blanche of Castile, marries Lewis of 
France, 141, 142 

Bohun, Humfrey, Earl of Hereford, 
248 

Boniface, Archbishop, 181, 185, 199 

Boniface VIII., p">pe, 247, 259 

Boroughbridge, battle of, 280 

Bouvines, battle of, 155 

Brabangon mercenaries, 94 

Bracton, Henry, 221 

Breaute, Falkes de, 170, 171 

Bridgenorth, siege of, 46 

Bristol, fall of, 287 

Brito, Richard, 83 

Britton, judge. 221 

Bruce, Robert, Earl of Carrick, as 
regent, 259 

Bruce, Robert, son of the Earl of 
Carrick, lays claim to the crown 
of Scotland, 240 ; his successor in 
Scotland, 275 

Burgh, Hubert de, justiciar, 169 ; as 
regent, 171; work of, 173; fall of, 
178 ; reinstatement of, 180 

Burghersh, Henry, Bishop of Lincoln, 
286 

Burnell, Robert, 216, 221 



CON 

CADWALADER, 48 
Cambuskenneth, 258 
Campaign of 1301, 259 
Camvill, Gerard, warden of Lincoln 

castle, 125 
Camvill, Nicolaa de, 167 
Canterbury, Archbishop of, his 

power, 60; disputed election of the 

Archbishop at, 145 
Castles, destruction of, by Henry II. , 

43 

Celestine III., pope, 126 

Chalus-Chabrol, castle of, 134 

Chancellor, his duties, 66 

Charles IV., King of France, 284 

Charters, confirmation of the, 250; 
reconfirmation of the, 252 

Christianity in England, 59 

Church, English, its history, 58; 
national unity first realized, 59 ; 
under the heptarchy, 59; great 
power of the clergy, 60; alliance 
with the State, 60 ; effect of the 
Conquest on, 61 ; policy of William 
I. regarding, 62 ; in Stephen's reign, 
64; quarrel of John with, 145; 
plunder of the clergy, 152 ; state of, 
in 1213, 151 

Clare, Richard de (Strongbow), his 
conquests of Ireland, 91 

Clare, Richard de, Earl of Gloucester, 
197, 198 ; his death, 201 

Clarendon, council at, 76 ; constitu- 
tions of, 76 ; council at, 81 ; assize 
of, passed, 81 ; constitutions of, re- 
nounced, 91 

Clement III., pope, 126 

Clement V., pope, 254 

Clergy, the, Stephen's breach with, 
20 ; great power of, 61 ; plunder of, 
153; representation of, under. Ed- 
ward I., 236; relations of Edward 
I. with, 245; taxation of, 246; Ed- 
ward I. quarrels with, 247 

Clericis, Laicos, Bull, 247 

Clerkenwell, council of, 105 

Clifford, Roger, justiciar of Wales, 
219 

Coinage, debased by Stephen, 20 

Commons, House of, 235 

Comnenus, Isaac, King of Cyprus, 
120 

Comyn, John, Farlof Badenoch, 259, 
261 

Confirmatio cartarum, 86 

Conquest, the effects of, on the 
Church, 61 



Index. 



293 



EDM 

Conrad of Hohenstaufen, 29 

Conrad of Montferrat, 119 

Conradin, 5 

Consilt, battle of, 48 

Constance of Brittany, 127 

Constantia of France married to 
Eustace, 31 

Constitutional crisis, 248, 249 

Constitutional grievances in 1245, 
180 

Constitutions of Clarendon, 76 ; re- 
nounced, 91 

Corbeuil, William of Archbishop, 15 

Coronation, ceremony of, 47 

Court of Common Pleas, 225 

Court of Exchequer, 225 

Court of King's Bench, 225 

Court of Rome, character of, 91 

Coutances, Walter of, 127 

Cowton Moor, 18 

Crisis of 1258, 175 ; why it was de- 
layed, 189 

Crusade, second, 29 

Crusade, third, 105, 116 

Crusade of Prince Edward, 215 

Customs, the revenue, 231 ; the new, 
255 



T~\ ANEGELD, abolition of, 17, 58, 

David I., King of Scotland, first 
invasion by, 17; second invasion 
by, 19 

David, son of Llewelyn, Prince of 
Wales, rebels against Edward I., 
219 ; his death, 219 

De Religiosis statute, 223, 246 

Despenser, Hugh le, the baron's jus- 
ticiar, 199 ; his death, 209 

Despenser, Hugh le, the favorite of 
Edward IE, 279 ; sentence against, 
277; avarice and arrogance of, 284 

Despenser, Hugh le, Earl of Win- 
chester, hanged, 287 

Dictum de Kenilworth, 209 

Dunbar, battle of, 258 

Durham, Bishop of, 114 

EARLS, appointment of, 20 
Ecclesiastical school in the 
reign of Stephen, 64 
Ecclesiastical quarrels, 247 
Edmund of Abingdon, Archbishop of 
Canterbury, 179 ; driven into exile, 
185 



EDW 

Edmund of Cornwall, as regent, 238 
Edmund, Earl of Kent, 288 
Edward I., at the battle of Lewes, 
205 ; proclaimed king, 210 ; joins 
the crusade, 210; political educa- 
tion of, 212 ; motives determining 
his crusade, 213 ; his English policy, 
213; his idea of kingship, 214; 
crusade of 1270, 215 ; his accession 
to the throne, 216 ; administration 
of the kingdom during his pilgrim- 
age, 216 ; his coronation, 217; re- 
bellion of the prince of North 
Wales, 218 ; conquest of Wales, 
219 ; as a law-giver, 220 ; principles 
of his legislation, 222 ; his legal 
reforms, 222 ; parliamentary settle- 
ment of revenue on, 232 ; his first 
parliament, 233 ; national policy of, 
237 ; evil consequence caused by 
his absence, 237; his claims upon 
Scotland, 239 ; his relations with 
Philip IV., 243 ; quarrel with Philip 
IV., 243 ; consequences thereof, 

244 ; his relations with the clergy, 

245 ; quarrels with the clergy, 247 ; 
resistance of his subjects, 248, 249 ; 
dissatisfied with his subjects, 252 ; 
quarrels with Archbishop Winches- 
sey, 254 ; his relations with foreign 
merchants, 255 ; concludes peace 
with France, 258 ; marries Marga- 
ret, sistei of Philip IV., 258 ; truce 
concluded with Scotland, 258 ; his 
new constitution for Scotland, 260; 
his death, 261 ; his character and 
motives, 262 

Edward II., reactionary policy of, 
263 ; personal tastes and favorites 
of, 264 ; his character, 264 ; peace 
with Scotland, 266 ; married to Isa- 
belle of France, 267; coronation 
of, 267 ; controlled by the barons, 
273 ; his struggles in favor of Gaves- 
ton, 273 ; changes in the adminis- 
tration, 274; new favorites of, 278 ; 
at war with the barons, 282 ; his 
campaign in the north, 282 ; truce 
concluded with Scotland, 282 ; sum- 
moned to do homage to Charles 
IV., 284; intrigues of the queen 
against, 285 ; helplessness of, 286 ; 
overthrow and deposition of, 287 ; 
murder of, 288 ; importance and 
significance of his reign, 288; con- 
stitutional results of the epoch 
closing with his downfall, 290 



294 



Index. 



FRA 

Edward III., 287; appointed gover- 
nor of the kingdom, 288 

Eleanor, daughter of Henry II., 99, 
100 

Eleanor de Montfort, wife of Llewe- 
lyn, Prince of Wales, 219 

Eleanor of Aquitaine, 28 ; her mar- 
riage with Henry II., 31 ; resent on 
the death of her husband, 116 ; her 
relations with John, 140 ; her death, 

143 
Eleanor of Provence marries Henry 
III., 181 

Eleanor, widow of William Marshall, 
her second marriage with Simon de 
Montfort, 181 
Election at Canterbury, 143 
Evesham, battle of, 209 
Exchequer under Henry I., 227 
Empire, relations with the papacy, 3 
England, importance of its work 
during this epoch, 5 ; state of, 
during the absence of Henry II., 
54 ; under the heptarchy, 59 ; na- 
tional unity first realized, 59 ; alli- 
ance with Germany, 80 ; during the 
crusade, 122 ; state of, on the death 
of Richard, 137 ; separation from 
Normandy, 143 ; laid under inter- 
dict, 149 ; national inactivity of, 
184 ; at war with SScotland, 257 ; 
truce concluded, 258 
Essex, Earl of, 263 
Eugenius III., 30 

Eustace, son of Stephen, 31 ; his mar- 
riage with Constantia of France, 
31 ; his death, 32 



FERRERS, Earl of Derby, joins a 
league against Henry II., 94 
Ferrers, Wihiam of, Earl of Derby, 

197 
Feudal laws, 50 
Feudal lords, power of, 223 
Finance, system of, during the reign 

of Edward I., 225 
Fitz Osbert, William, 133, 134 
Fitz Peter, Geoffrey, justiciar, 133, 

_ I S3, 154 

Fitz Urse, Reginald, 82 

Fitz Walter, Robert, 159, 169 

Flemings, invasion of Normandy by, 

93 
Foliot, Gilbert, 30 
Foreign affairs in 1258, 176 
France, alliance of, with Scotland, 259 



HAR 

Franconia, 6 

Frederick I., Emperor, 3, 37, 71, 80, 
117 

Frederick II., Emperor, 3, 220; mar- 
ries Isabella, sister to Henry III., 
181, 220 

Frederick of Swabia, 117 

French history, character of the epoch 
of, 2 

Friscobaldi, the, 273 

Fulk the Good, Count of Anjou, 161 



GASCONS, the rebellion of, 189 ; 
Gaveston, Piers, favorite of 
Edward II., 264 ; his hatred of the 
earls, 270 ; banishment of, 270 ; re 
call of, 271 ; his death, 274 

Geddington, assembly at, 105 

Geoffrey of Anjou, 14, 16, 25, 28 

Geoffrey of Brittany, 103 ; his death, 
104 

Geoffrey of Nantes rebels against his 
brother Henry II., 58 

Geoffrey, son of Henry II., Arch' 
bishop of York, 127 

Geographical summary, 6 

German history, character of the 
epoch of, 3 

Germany, 3 ; condition of, under the 
early Plantagenets, 7 ; alliance with 
England, 80 

Giffard, Archbishop of York, ap- 
pointed regent, 216 

Gilbert, Earf of Gloucester, 204, 206, 
208, 209 ; swears fealty to Edward 
I., 216 ; marries Johanna, daugh- 
ter of Edward L, 239 ; his death, 
248 

Gilbert of Vacceuil, 55 

Gilbert, son of the Earl of Gloucester, 
regent, 272 

Glanvill, Ranulf, the justiciar, 95, 103, 
in, 116; his death, 118 

Gray, John de, Bishop of Norwich, 
elected Archbishop of Canterbury, 
146 

Gregory IX., pope, 185 

Grosseteste, Robert, Bishop of Lin- 
coln, 182, 185 

Gualo, 160, 166, 170 

Gwynneth, Owen, 50 



HARCLAY, Sir Andrew, gover- 
nor of Carlisle, 280; execution 
of, 282 



Index. 



2 95 



HEN 

Hawisia, daughter of William, Earl 
Gloucester, 99; wife of John, 142 

Henry I., question of succession at 
his death, 12 ; precautions taken by, 
13 ; competitors for the succession, 
14; his funeral, 16 

Henry II., knighted at Carlisle, 31 ; 
marries Eleanor of Aquitaine, 32 ; 
his arrival in England, 32 ; leaves 
England, 33; importance attached 
to his succession, 34; his youth 
and education, 35 ; his character, 
36 ; his family policy, 36 ; his great 
position in Christendom, 37 ; mis- 
management of his children, 38 ; 
his personal appearance, 38 ; early 
reforms of, 39 ; his advisers, 41 ; 
coronation of, 42 ; disputes re- 
garding the resumption of lands, 
43 ; surrender of the malcontents , 
45 ; frequent councils, 45 ; second 
coronation of, 47 ; first war against 
Wales, 49 ; visits France, 49 ; his 
foreign possessions, 49 ; his rela- 
tions with his vassals, 50 ; his rela- 
tions to the King of France, 50 ; 
questions of boundary, 52 ; per- 
sonal questions, 52 ; his true po- 
licy, 52 ; crushes his brother Geof- 
frey's rebellion, 53 ; desists from 
attacking Toulouse, 53 ; his chil- 
dren, 54 ; conclusion of peace with 
Lewis VII., 54 ; his legal reforms, 
54, 55 ; increase of national unity, 
57; his confidence in Thomas 
Becket, 67; returns from France, 
69 ; second war with Wales, 70 ; 
his disputes with Becket, 71-75 ; 
appeal to the ancient customs, 
75 ; his motives, 76 ; exaspe- 
rated at Becket, 77 ; his cruel mea- 
sures towards Becket, 80 ; third 
war with Wales, 80 ; proceedings 
during the quarrel, 80 ; reconcilia- 
tion with Becket, 83 ; perseverance 
in reform 85 ; training of the people 
in self-government, 87 ; his political 
object in crowning his son, 90 ; ap- 
plies to the pope on Becket's death, 
91 ; his penitence and absolution, 
91 ; quarrels with his son Henry, 
93 ; his success against Lewis VII., 
95 ; in France, 95 ; his arrival in 
England, 96 ; his policy, 97 ; impor- 
tance of this struggle, 98 ; resumes 
his schemes, 99 ; his visit to Eng- 
land, 100 ; his fast quarrel, 105 ; at 



HUG 

war with Philip II., 106 ; his flight 
to Normandy, 107; his last days, 
107 ; his death, 100 

Henry III., 5 ; character of the 
reign of, 161 ; his character, 162 ; 
division of his reign, 164 ; his party, 
166 ; coronation of, 166 ; his foreign 
policy, 173; his personal adminis- 
tration, 174 ; internal mis-govern- 
ment, 174; his first act, 175 ; his in- 
gratitude, 177; his plan of govern- 
ing, 180 ; marries Eleanor of Pro- 
vence, 180 ; his unconstitutional 
means for raising money, 183 ; his 
impolicy, 183 ; his relations with 
the popes, 184 ; accepts the kingdom 
of Sicily, 186 ; his French transac- 
tions, 187 ; visits France, 189 ; his 
dynastic policy, 190; political trou- 
bles of, 200 ; the award of Lewis 
IX., 201 ; its effects, 203 ; military 
successes of, 204 ; defeated at the 
battle of Lewes, 205 ; conduct of 
the new government, 207 ; defeats 
the barons at Evesham, 209 ; his 
death, 210 

Henry VI., Emperor of Germany, 
122-129 

Henry, Bishop of Winchester, 22, 24 ; 
retires from court, 25 

Henry, Earl of Lancaster, 284, 286 

Henry of Essex, constable, 48, 71 

Henry, son of Henry II., his mar- 
riage, 54 ; coronation of, without 
his queen, 81 ; second coronation 
of, with his queen, 92 ; quarrels 
with his father, 92 ; intrigues of, 
too ; second revolt against his fa- 
ther, 103 ; his death, 104 

Henry, son of the King of the Romans, 
his death, 210 

Henry the Lion, Duke of Saxony and 
Bavaria, his marriage, 80 

Heracliui, patriarch, mission of, 104 

Herbert, Bishop of Salisbury, 133 

Hildebrandine revival, 62 

History, human, various areas and 
stages of, 1 ; under the early Plan- 
tagenets, 5 

Hohenstaufen, drama of, 3 ; empire 
of, 8 

Honorius III., pope, 166 

House of Commons, 235 

House of Lords, 235 

Hoveden, Roger, 35 

Hugh de Gournay, 142 

Hugh of Beauchamp, 104 



296 



Index. 



JOH 

Hugh of la Marche, 141 
Hugh of Lincoln, 133 
Hugh of Nunant, Bishop of Coventry, 
131 



IMPORTED merchandise, taxes 
on, 221 

Income tax, 55 

Ingeburga of Denmark, 141 

Innocent III., pope, 4, 133, 149, 150 

Innocent IV., pope, 185 

Interdict, England laid under, 149 

Ireland, proposal to conquer, 45 ; 
expedition of Henry II. to, 91 

Isabella, betrothed wife of Hugh of la 
Marche, 141 

Isabella of France, wife of Edward 
II., 268; position and policy of, 
282 ; her intn'gues in France, 285 ; 
her triumphant march to the West 
of England, 286 ; rule under, 288 

Isabella, sister to Henry III., mar- 
ried to Emperor Frederick II., 180 

Italy, condition of, 7 

Itinerant judges first go their circuits, 
90 

JERUSALEM, captured by Sala- 
din, 106 ; Richard's march on, 121 

Jews, persecution of, 112 ; banished 
from England, 239 

Jocelin de Bailleul, 76 

Johanna, daughter of Henry II., 
marries Gilbert of Gloucester, 239 

Johanna, daughter of Henry II., 99 ; 
wife of William the Good, 119 

John, son of Henry II., his marriage, 
99 ; cursed by his dying father, 
109 ; provision made for, by his 
brother Richard, 115 ; position of, 
125 ; intrigues with Philip II., 127 ; 
rebellion of, 130; secures Nor- 
mandy, 137 ; his coronation, 138 ; 
division of the history of his reign, 
139 ; at peace with Philip II., 141 ; 
his second marriage, 141 ; loses 
Normandy and Anjou, 142 ; his 
ecclesiastical troubles, 145 ; excom- 
munication of, 149 ; his obduracy, 
149 ; swears fealty to the pope, 150 ; 
quarrels with the barons, 151 ; his 
journey to the North, 154 ; goes to 
France, 155 ; the crown offered to 
Lewis, 159 ; his successes against 
the barons, 159 ; his death, 160 



LEW 

John of Salisbury, 30 

John of Brienne, 4 

John the Marshall, 74, 78 

John XXII., 3 

Judges, punishment of, 239 ; itine- 
rant, 86 ; fiscal work of, 86 ■ first go 
their circuits, 87 

Judicature, restoration of, 46 ; cen- 
tral, 87 

Jurisdiction, provincial reform of, 86, 

87 
Justice, administration of, 55 



KENILWORTH, dictum de, 
209 



LACY, Henry de, Earl of Lincoln, 
269 ; his death, 272 

Lands, resumption of, 44 

Langton, Stephen, elected Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, 148 ; absolves 
the king, 153 ; crowns Henry III., 
171 : his death, 177 

Langton, Walter, 249, 255, 266, 274 

Laudibiliter Bull, 46 

Laws, appeal to the, of Henry I., 
154 ; probable plan for the codifica- 
tion of, 221 ; Edward's principles of 
legislation, 222 

League against Henry II., 93 

Leicester, Earl of, joins a league 
against Henry II., 94 

Leopold, Duke of Austria, 222 

Lewes, battle of, 203 

Lewes, Mise of, 206 

Lewis VI., King of France, 9 

Lewis VII., King of France, 5 ; joins 
the second crusade, 28 ; his charac- 
ter, 37 ; his relation to Henry II., 
50 ; takes up the cause of Becket, 
79 ; joins a league against Henry 
II., 93; utterly routed by Henry 
II., 97; his death, 102 

Lewis IX., King of France, 5; arbi- 
trates between Henry III. and his 
barons, 201 ; award of, 201 ; effects 
of the award, 203 ; motives for his 
decision, 205 ; his death, 215 

Lewis of Bavaria, 3 

Lewis, son of Philip of France, his 
marriage, 142 ; the crown of Eng- 
land offered to him, 159 ; his suc- 
cesses against John, 159 ; lands in 
England, 159 ; treaty concluded 
with Henry III., 167; defeated at 



Index. 



297 



MAT 

Lincoln and departure from Eng- 
land, 168 

Liege, Bishop of, 130 

Lincoln, battle of, 23, 168 

Lincoln, parliament at, 254 

Linlithgow castle, 259 

Libon, 10 

Llewelyn, Prince of North Wales, 
204; rebellion of, against Edward 
I., 218; married to Eleanor de 
Montfort, 219 ; his death, 219 

Longchamp, William, bishop of Ely, 

115; chancellor, 123; as supreme 

justiciar, 124; demands the royal 

. castles, 125 , removed from the jus- 

ticiarship, 127 

Lords, House of, 235 

Lorraine, Lower, 9 

Iothar II., 7 

Lucy, Richard de, 30, 41, 76, 94, 95 ; 
appointed regent during the king's 
absence, 54 

Lusignan, Ethelmer, Bishop of Win- 
chester, 190 

Lusignan, Guy of, 105 



IV/r ABILI A., Countess of Glouces- 

Madoc, rebellion of, 256 

Magna Carta, granted at Runny- 
mede, 157; attempts to annul it, 
158; re-issued, 166; third issue of, 
169 ; confirmed, 239 

Malcolm IV., King of Scotland, 44 

Mandeville, Geoffrey, Earl of Essex, 
26, 142, 167 

Mandeville, William, 115 

Manners during this epoch, 4 

Mans, le, capture of. by Philip II., 
106 

Margaret of France, daughter of 
Lewis VII., 54; wife of Henry, son 
of Henry II., 104 

Margaret, sister of Philip IV., mar- 
ries Edward I., 258 

Marlborough, parliament of, '209 

Marshall, Richard, 179 

Marshall, William, Earl of Pembroke, 
166 ; his death, 169 ; work of, 171 

Martell, William, 30 

Martin, master, 185 

Matilda, daughter of Henry 1., fealty 
sworn to, 14, 17; her arrival in 
England, 22 ; elected Lady of Eng- 
land, 23 ; her imprudent rule, 24 ; 
her struggles against Stephen, 25 ; 



ORD 

flies to Oxford, 25 ; the kingdom 
divided, 26 ; her government in 
Normandy, 42 

Matilda, daughter of Henry II., her 
marriage, 80 

Maurienne, Count of, 93 

Mercenaries, importation of, 20; ex- 
pulsion of, 42 

Merchandize, taxation on importation 
of, 231 

Merchants, foreign, relations of Ed- 
ward I. with, 255 

Merlin, prophecies of, 39 

Miles of Hereford, 28 

Military system in Henry II. 's time. 
88 

Mise of Lewes, 206 

Monasteries, 63 

Monks of Canterbury, their quarrels 
regarding the election of Arch- 
bishop, 146 

Montfort, Simon de, Earl of Leices- 
ter, marries Eleanor, daughter' of 
John, 181 ; his character, 193 ; mili- 
tary successes of, 204; parliament 
of, 207 ; impolicy of his sons, 208 ; 
killed in the battle of Evesham, 
209 ; his character as a great and 
good man, 210, 211 

Moral lessons, 5 

Mortimer, Hugh, 45 

Mortimer, Roger, 199 ; appointed re-, 
gent, 216 

Mortimer, Roger, Lord of Wigmore, 
278, 284, 285, 288 

Morville, Hugh de, 82 

Mowbray, Roger, 106 



NEVILLE, Ralph, Bishop of Chi- 
chester, 180 
New Custom, the, 255 
Nicolas IV., pope, 246 
Nicolas. Bishop of Tusculum, 154 
Nigel, Bishop of Ely, 42 
Norman bishops, 63 
Normandy, invasion of, 104 , forfeiture 
of, 142 ; separation from England, 

■k I43 

Normans, results of rule under, 12 

Northampton, council at, 77 ; parlia- 
ment at, 268 
Nottingham, castle of, 125 

ORDAINERS, the, 272 
Ordinances of 1311, the, 272 : 
revocation of, 281 



298 



Index. 



PUI 

Orlton, Adam, Bishop of Hereford, 

286, 287 
Otho, Cardinal, 185 
Otho, of Saxony, Emperor, 134 
Oxford, siege of, 26 ; parliament of, 

198 ; provisions of, 199 



PACIFICATION, terms of, in 
"53. 39 
Palestine, condition of, 104 
Pandulf, 150; as legate, 171 ; resigns, 

J 73 
Papacy, relations with the empire, 3 ; 
demands in Henry III.'s time, 169 ; 
taxation, 177 ; Henry III.'s relations 
with the popes, 184 ; list of papal 
assumptions, 185 ; papal claims over 
Scotland, 253 

Paris, Matthew, 139, 183, 195 

Parliament, 181 ; discussions in, 182 ; 
of 1258, 197 ; origin of our modern, 
207 ; under Edward I., 234 ; growth 
of, 234 ; Lincoln, 253 

Peckham, Archbishop, 247 

Pembroke, Earl of, 270 

Perche, Count of, 169 

Peter de Vineis, 220 

Peter of Wakefield, 150 

Petronilla, Lady, 96 

Peverell, William, 45 

Philip II., King of France, his hatred 
of Henry II., 103; at war with 
Henry II., 106 ; joins the third cru- 
sade, 116 ; at Messina, 119 ; intrigues 
of, against Richard, 128 ; concludes 
a two months' peace with John, 
140; at peace with John, 141 ; takes 
Normandy and Anjou, 142 

Philip III., King of France, 216; his 
death, 243 

Philip IV., the Fair, King of France, 
his relations with Edward I., 243 ; 
quarrels with Edward I., 244 

Philip V., King of France, 284 

Philip of Flanders joins a league 
against Henry II., 94 

Pipewell, council of, 114 

Political history during this epoch, 2 

Politicians, ecclesiastical, 64 

Portugal during the age of the early 
Plantagenets, 10 

Provisions of Oxford, 199 

Provisions of Westminster, 200 

Puiset, Hugh de, Bishop of Durham, 
94; justiciar, 124, 125; expelled, 
126 



Q 



ROB 

UIA Emptores statute, 223, 235 



"D ANULF, Earl of Chester, 23, 

Ranulf, Earl of Chester, 136, 166, 178 

Raymond of Toulouse, 195 

Rebellion of 11 36, 18 

Reform, Henry II. 's plans of, 39 ; pro- 
gress of, 55 ; Henry's perseverance 
in, 85 ; political object of it, 86 ; new 
schemes of, 271 

Reginald, Earl of Cornwall, 95 

Reginald, subprior, elected Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, 147 

Religion during this epoch, 4 

Revenue, nature of, in the time of 
Henry II., 55; under Henry III., 
228 ; sources of, during Edward I.'s 
reign, 225 : customs, 231 ; parlia- 
mentary settlement on Edward I., 
230 

Reynolds. Walter, 275 

Richard I., Cceur de Lion, son ©f 
Henry II., 53; quarrels with his 
brother Henry, 103 ; his father's 
distrust of, 104 ; joins the third cru- 
sade, 105; does homage to Philip 
II., 106; joins in a conspiracy 
against his father, 106 ; character of 
his reign, no; his accession to the 
throne, in; his coronation, 112; 
his personal appearance and char- 
acter, 112, 113; his mode of pro- 
curing means for the third crusade, 
114; starts on the crusade, 115; his 
journey along the Italian shore, 
118 ; at Messina, 119 ; his campaigns 
in Palestine, 120; exploits of, 121 ; 
his retreat and truce, 122 ; captivity 
of, 122 ; negotiations for his release, 
129 ; ransom raised for his release, 
129; his release, 130; his second 
visit to England, 131 ; money re- 
fused him by the great council, 133 ; 
his last years, 134; events of the 
war with Philip II., 134 ; his death, 
135 

Richard, Archbishop of Canterbury, 

J 77 

Richard, Earl of Cornwall, King of 
the Romans, brother to Henry III., 
173, 178; his marriage, 181; his 
character, 192; at the battle of 
Lewes, 205 ; his death, 210 

Robert, Earl of Gloucester, 16 ; swears 
fealty to Stephen, 17; his power, 



Index. 



299 



SPA 

19 ; taken prisoner, 26 ; his death, 

Robert, Earl of Leicester, regent, 
during the king's absence, 55 

Roches, Peter des, Bishop of Win- 
chester, regent, 166, 170; the king's 
adviser, 178 ; fall of, 179 

Rochester castle besieged, 159 

Roger, Bishop of Salisbury, 15; jus- 
ticiar of Henry I., 21 ; arrested, 21 

Roger, Earl of Leicester, 28 

Roger of Hereford, 44 

Roger of Pont l'Eveque, Archbishop 
of York, 81 

Rome, proceedings at, 30 ; character 
of the court of, 91, 92 

Rudolf of Hapsburg, 3 

Runnymede, granting of the Magna 
Carta at, 157 



SAER DE QUINCY, 168 
St. Albans, assembly'at, 154 

St. Andrew's, Bishop of, 259 

St. Bernard, 4, 30 

St. Edmund, 85 

St. Edmund's, coronation at, 47, 48 

St. Gregory, 59 

St. Hugh, 133 

St. Paul's, council at, 154 

St. William, 30 

Saladin, Sultan of Egypt, 104 

Salisbury, Earl of, 160 

Salisbury, meeting of barons at, 249 

Saragossa, 11 

Saxony, 8 

Scotland, invasion of England by, 
17, 19 ; submission of to Henry III., 
97; claims of Edward I upon, 239; 
the kingdom of, 240 ; papal claims 
over, 254 ; alliance of, with France, 
257; troubles in, 257; war against 
England, 258 ; truce with England, 
affairs in, after the fall of Balliol, 
259 ; Edward's new constitution for, 
259 ; truce concluded with Edward 
II., 282 

Scottish independance, war of, 258 

Scutage, institution of, 56 • 

Segrave, Sir John, 259 

Segrave, Stephen, justiciar, 177 

Shrewsbury, assembly at, 234 

Sybilla, queen of Jerusalem, sister of 
Baldwin the Leper, 104, 119 

Simon de Montfort, see Montfort, 
Simon de 

Spain, state of, 9 



TRA 

Standard, battle of the, 19 

Stapleton, Bishop of Exeter, 283 

Statute De Religiosis, 246 

Statute of Wales, 220 

Statute of Westminster, the first, 234 

Statute of Westminster, 224 

Stephen of Blois, his claim to the 
throne, 14 ; his reception in Eng- 
land, 15 ; his election and corona- 
tion, 15; his first charter, 16; his 
second charter, 17; invaded by the 
Scots, 17, 19 ; rebellion of 1136, 18 ; 
beginning of troubles, 18; his im- 
prudent policy, 19 ; debases coinage, 
20 ; his new earls, 20 ; imports mer- 
cenaries, 20; his breach with the 
clergy, 20 ; arrests the bishops, 21 ; 
beginning of anarchy, 22 ; taken 
prisoner, 22 ; is released, 25 ; his 
success in 1142, 26 : division of the 
kingdom, 27 ; period of anarchy, 28 ; 
proceedings at Rome, 30 ; quarrels 
with the arehbishop, 30 ; question of 
succession, 31 ; negotiates for peace, 
32 ; his death, 33 ; estimation of his 
character, 33 

Stigand, Archbishop, 61 

Stirling, English defeated near, 259 

Stratford, John, Bishop of Winches- 
ter, 287 

Swabia, 6 

TANCRED, King of Sicily, 119 
Taxation, variety of, in Henry 
II. 's reign, 87; papal, 177; changes 
in the mode of, 228 ; summoning of 
representative assemblies for the 
purposes of, 232 ; of the clergy, 246 ; 
confirmation of the charter estab- 
lishing the right of the people to 
determine, 240 

Templars, the, 53, 54 

Theobald, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
21; quarrels with Stephen, 30; 
negotiates the succesion of Henry 
II., 41 ; adviser to Henry II., 42; 
his death, 55 

Theobald, Count, 14, 16 

Thomas, Earl of Lancaster, 269 ; des- 
potism of, 276, 277; execution of, 
280; interior consequences of his 
execution, 281 

Thurstan, Archbishop, 19 

Tickhill, castle of, 125 

Toledo, n 

Toulouse, war of, 53 

Tracy, William de, 82 



300 



Index. 



WAR 

VALENCE, Aymer de, Earl of 
Pembroke, 261, 274, 276 : made 
governor of Scotland, 266; his 
death, 285 
Vescy, Lady de, 273; Eustace de, 
*59i l6 7 



WALFRAN of Meulan, 28 
Wales, at war with Henry II., 
48 ; second war with Henry II., 71 ; 
third war with Henry II., 80; tur- 
bulence of the princes, 217; con- 
quest of, 219 ; statute of, 220; rebel- 
bellion in, under Madoc, 256 
Wallace, Sir William, 258, 260 
Wallingford, peace negotiations at, 32 
Walter, Hubert, Bishop of Salisbury, 
115, 116, 119, 130; made Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, 130 ; govern- 
ment of, 131 ; resignation of, 133 ; 
transfers his devotion to John on 
the death of Richard, 137 ; his 
death, 144 
Walter of Cantilupe, Bishop of Wor- 
cester, 197, 199 
Wareham, 27 
Warenne, Earl, 238 



YPR 

Warenne, William of, surrender of his 
estates in Norfolk, 46 ; knighthood 
conferred on, 47 

Westminster, treaty at, 32; council 
at, 74 ; provisions of, 200 ; courts at, 
226 ; statute of, the first, 234 

William II., King of Scotland, joins a 
league against Henry II., 94; taken 
prisoner, 96 

William, Earl of Salisbury, 164 

William of Aumale, 171 

William of Eynesford, 74 

William of Ferrers, 197 

William, son of Henry I., 12 

William the Good, of Sicily, his mar- 
riage, 99 

Winchelsey, Robert, 246, 249 ; quar- 
rels with the king, 254, 268 

Winchester, Bishop of, brother of 
Stephen, 41 

Winchester, Bishop of, 114 

Winchester, statute of, 225 

Woodstock, council at, 71, 72 

Worms, diet of, 128 



\7PRES, William of, 44 




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Logan Female Coll., Russellville, Ky. 
No. West Univ., Evanston, 111. 
State Normal School, Baltimore, Md. 
Hamilton Coll., Clinton, N. Y. 
Doane Coll., Crete, Neb. 
Princeton College, Princeton, N.J. 
Williams Coll., Williamstown, Mass. 
Cornell Univ., Ithaca, N. Y. 
Illinois Coll., Jacksonville, 111. 



Univ. of South, Sewaunee, Tenn. 
Wesleyan Univ., Mt. Pleasant, la. 
Univ. of Cal„ Berkeley, Cal. 
So. Car. Coll., Columbia, S. C. 
Amsterdam Acad., Amsterdam, 

N. Y. 
Carleton Coll., Northfield, Minn. 
Wesleyan Univ., Middletown, Mass. 
Albion Coll., Albion, Mich. 
Dartmouth Coll., Hanover, N. H. 
Wilmington Coll., Wilmington, O. 
Madison Univ., Hamilton, N. Y. 
Syracuse Univ., Syracuse, N. Y. 
Univ. of Wis., Madison, Wis. 
Union Coll., Schenectady, N. Y. 
Norwich Free Acad., Norwich, Conn. 
Greenwich Acad., Greenwich, Conn. 
Univ. of Neb., Lincoln, Neb. 
Kalamazoo Coll., Kalamazoo, Mich. 
Olivet Coll., Olivet, Mich. 
Amherst Coll., Amherst, Mass. 
Ohio State Univ., Columbus, O. 
Free Schools, Oswego, N. Y. 



Bishop J. F. Hurst, ex- President of Drew Theol. Sem. 
" It appears to me that the idea of Morris in his Epochs is 
strictly in harmony with the philosophy of history — namely, that 
great movements should be treated not according to narrow 
geographical and national limits and distinction, but universally, 
according to their place in the general life of the world. The 
historical Maps and the copious Indices are welcome additions 
to the volumes." 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT 
HISTORY, 

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 

GREECE AND ROME, AND OF THEIR RELA TIONS TO 

OTHER COUNTRIES AT SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS. 

Edited by 

Rev. G. W. Cox and Charles Sankey, M.A. 

Eleven volumes, i6mo, with 41 Maps and Plans. 

Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $11.00. 



TROY— ITS LEGEND, HISTORY, AND 
LITERATURE. By S. G. W. Benjamin. 

" The task of the author has been to gather into a clear 
and very readable narrative all that is known of legendary, 
historical, and geographical Troy, and to tell the story of 
Homer, and weigh and compare the different theories in tne 
Homeric controversy. The work is well done. His book is 
altogether candid, and is a very valuable and entertaining 
compendium." — Hartford Couraitt. 

"As a monograph on Troy, covering all sides of the ques- 
tion, it is of great value, and supplies a long vacant place in 
our fund of classical knowledge." — N. Y. Christian Advocate. 

THE GREEKS AND THE PERSIANS. By 

Rev G. W. Cox. 

"It covers the ground in a perfectly satisfactory wav. 
The work is clear, succinct, and readable." — New York 
Independent. 

" Marked by thorough and comprehensive scholarship and 
by a skillful style." — Congregaiionalist. 

"It would be hard to find a more creditable book. The 
author's prefatory remarks upon the origin and growth of 
Greek civilization are alone worth the price of the volume.' 
— Christian Union. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 

THE ATHENIAN EMPIRE— From the Flight 
of Xerxes to the Fall of Athens. By Rev. 
G. W. Cox. 

" Mr. Cox writes in such a way as to bring before the 
reader everything which is important to be known or learned ; 
and his narrative cannot fail to give a good idea of the men 
and deeds with which he is concerned." — The Churchman. 

" Mr. Cox has done his work with the honesty of a true 
student. It shows persevering scholarship and a desire to 
get at the truth." — New York Herald. 

THE SPARTAN AND THEBAN SUPREMA- 
CIES. By Charles Sankey, M.A. 

" This volume covers the period between the disasters of 
Athens at the close of the Pelopenesian war and the rise of 
Macedon. It is a very striking and instructive picture of the 
political life of the Grecian commonwealth at that time." — 
The Churchman. 

"It is singularly interesting to read, and in respect to 
arrangement, maps, etc., is all that can be desired." — Boston 
Congregationalist. 

THE MACEDONIAN EMPIRE— Its Rise and 
Culmination to Death of Alexander the 
Great. By A. M. Curteis, M.A. 

"A good and satisfactory history of a very important period. 
The maps are excellent, and the story is lucidly and vigor- 
ously told. " — The Nation. 

" The same compressive style and yet completeness of 

detail that have characterized the previous issues in this 

delightful series, are found in this volume. Certainly the art 

of conciseness in writing was never carried to a higher or 

more effective point." — Eoston Saturday Evening Gazette. 
i 

**# The above five Volumes give a connected and complete 

history of Greece from the earliest times to the death of 

Alexander. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 



EARLY ROME— From the Foundation of the 
City to its Destruction by the Gauls. By 
W. Ihne, Ph.D. 

" Those who want to know the truth instead of the tra- 
ditions that used to be learned of our fathers, will find in 1 ^e 
work entertainment, careful scholarship, and sound sense. 1 —• 
Cincinnati Times. 

" The book is excellently well done. The views are those 
of a learned and able man, and they are presented in this 
volume with great force and clearness." — The Nation. 

ROME AND CARTHAGE— The Punic Wars. 

By R. Bosworth Smith. 

" By blending the account of Rome and Carthage the ac- 
complished author presents a succinct and vivid picture of 
two great cities and people which leaves a deep impression. 
The story is full of intrinsic interest, and was never better 
told." — Christian Union. 

" The volume is one of rare interest and value." — Chicago 
Interior. 

"An admirably condensed history of Carthage, from its 
establishment by the adventurous Phoenician traders to its 
sad and disastrous fall." — New York Herald. 

THE GRACCHI, MARIUS, AND SULLA. By 

A. H. Beesley. 

" A concise and scholarly historical sketch, descriptive of 
the decay of the Roman Republic, and the events which paved 
the way for the advent of the conquering Caesar. It is an 
excellent account of the leaders and legislation of the repub- 
lic."— Boston Post. 

" It is prepared in succinct but comprehensive style, and is 
an excellent book for reading and reference." — New York 
Observer. 

" No better condensed account of the two Gracchi and the 
turbulent careers of Marius and Sulla has yet appeared."— 
New York Independent. 



EPOCHS OF ANCIENT HISTORY 

THE ROMAN TRIUMVIRATES. By the Very Rev. 
Charles Merivale, D.D. 

" In brevity, clear and scholarly treatment of the subject, 
and the convenience of map, index, and side notes, the 
volume is a model." — New York Tribune. 

" An admirable presentation, and in style vigorous and 
picturesque. " — Hartford Courani. 

THE EARLY EMPIRE— From the Assassina- 
tion of Julius Caesar to the Assassination 
of Domitian. By Rev. W. Wolfe Capes, M.A. 

" It is written with great clearness and simplicity of style, 
and is as attractive an account as has ever been given in 
brief of one of the most interesting periods of Roman 
History." — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

"It is a clear, well-proportioned, and trustworthy perfor- 
mance, and well deserves to be studied." — Christian at 
Work. 

THE AGE OF THE ANTONINES— The Roman 
Empire of the Second Century. By Rev. 
W. Wolfe Capes, M.A. 

" The Roman Empire during the second century is the 
broad subject discussed in this book, and discussed with 
learning and intelligence." — New York Independent. 

" The writer's diction is clear and elegant, and his narra- 
tion is free from any touch of pedantry. In the treatment of 
its prolific and interesting theme, and in its general plan, the 
book is a model of works of its class." — New York Herald. 

"We are glad to commend it. It is written clearly, and 
with care and accuracy. It is also in such neat and compact 
form as to be the more attractive." — Congregationalist. 

*^* The above six volumes give the History of Rome from 
the founding of the City to the death of Marcus Aurelius 
Antoninus. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN 
HISTORY. 

A SERIES OF BOOKS NARRATING THE HISTORY OF 

ENGLAND AND EUROPE A T SUCCESSIVE EPOCHS 

SUBSEQUENT TO THE CHRISTIAN ERA. 

Edited by 
Edward E. Morris. 

Eighteen volumes, i6mo, with 74 Maps, Plans, and Tables. 

Sold separately. Price per vol., $1.00. 

The Set, Roxburgh style, gilt top, in box, $18.00. 



THE BEGINNING OF THE MIDDLE AGES- 
England and Europe in the Ninth Century. 

By the Very Rev. R. W. Church, M.A. 

"A remarkably thoughtful and satisfactory discussion of 
the causes and results of the vast changes which came upon 
Europe during the period discussed. The book is adapted to 
be exceedingly serviceable." — Chicago Standard. 

"At once readable and valuable. It is comprehensive and 
yet gives the details of a period most interesting to the student 
of history. " — Herald and Presbyter. 

"It is written with a clearness and vividness of statement 
which make it the pleasantest reading. It represents a great 
deal of patient research, and is careful and scholarly."— 
Boston Journal. 

THE NORMANS IN EUROPE— The Feudal 
System and England under the Norman 
Kings. By Rev. A. H. Johnson, M.A. 

" Its pictures of the Normans in their home, of the Scan- 
dinavian exodus, the conquest of England, and Norman 
administration, are full of vigor and cannot fail of holding the 
reader's attention." — Episcopal Register. 

" The style of the author is vigorous and animated, and he 
has given a valuable sketch of the origin and progress of the 
great Northern movement that has shaped the history of 
modern Europe." — Boston Transcript. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN- HISTORY 

THE CRUSADES. By Rev. G. W. Cox. 

" To be warmly commended for important qualities. The 
author shows conscientious fidelity to the materials, and such 
skill in the use of them, that, as a result, the reader has 
before him a narrative related in a style that makes it truly 
fascinating. ' ' — Congregationalist. 

" It is written in a pure and flowing style, and its arrange- 
ment and treatment of subject are exceptional." — Christian 
Intelligencer, 

THE EARLY PL A NTAGEN ETS— Their 
Relation to the History of Europe; The 
Foundation and Growth of Constitutional 
Government. By Rev. W. Stubbs, M.A. 

"Nothing could be desired more clear, succinct, and well 
arranged. All parts of the book are well done. It may be 
pronounced the best existing brief history of the constitution 
for this, its most important period. " — The Nation. 

"Prof. Stubbs has presented leading events with such fair- 
ness and wisdom as are seldom found. He is remarkably 
clear and satisfactory. " — The Churchman. 

EDWARD III. By Rev. W. Warburton, M.A. 

" The author has done his work well, and we commend it 
as containing in small space all essential matter." — New York 
Independent. 

" Events and movements are admirably condensed by the 
author, and presented in such attractive form as to entertain 
as well as instruct." — Chicago Interior. 

THE HOUSES OF LANCASTER AND YORK 
— The Conquest and Loss of France. By 

James Gairdner. 

" Prepared in a most careful and thorough manner, and 
ought to be read by every student." — New York Times. 

"It leaves nothing to be desired as regards compactness, 
accuracy, and excellence of literary execution." — Boston 
Journal. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY 

THE ERA OF THE PROTESTANT REVO- 
LUTION. By Frederic Seebohm. With Notes, on 
Books in English relating to the Reformation, by Prof. 
George P. Fisher, D.D. 

"For an impartial record of the civil and ecclesiastical 
changes about four hundred years ago, we cannot commend a 
better manual." — Sunday- School Times. 

"All that could be desired, as well in execution as in plan. 
The narrative is animated, and the selection and grouping of 
events skillful and effective." — The Nation. 

THE EARLY TUDORS— Henry VII., Henry 
VIII. By Rev. C. E. Moberley, M.A., late Master in 
Rugby School. 

"Is concise, scholarly, and accurate. On the epoch of which 
it treats, we know of no work which equals it." — N. Y. Observer. 

" A marvel of clear and succinct brevity and good historical 
judgment. There is hardly a better bock of its kind to be 
named." — New York Independent. 

THE AGE OF ELIZABETH. By Rev. M. 
Creighton, M.A. 

" Clear and compact in style ; careful in their facts, and 
just in interpretation of them. It sheds much light on the 
progress of the Reformation and the origin of the Popish 
reaction during Queen Elizabeth's reign ; also, the relation of 
Jesuitism to the latter." — Presbyterian Review. 

" A clear, concise, and just story of an era crowded with 
events of interest and importance. "—New Ycrb World. 

THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR— 16IS-1648. 

By Samuel Rawson Gardiner. 

"Asa manual it will prove of the greatest practical value, 
while to the general reader it will afford a clear and interesting 
account of events. We know of no more spirited and attractive 
recital of the great era." — Boston Saturday Evening Gazette. 

" The thrilling story of those times has never been told so 
vividly or succinctly as in this volume. " — Episcopal Register, 



EPOCHS OF MODERN- HISTORY. 

THE PURITAN REVOLUTION; and the First 
Two Stuarts, 1 603- 1 660. By Samuel Rawson 
Gardiner. 

" The narrative is condensed and brief, yet sufficiently com- 
prehensive to give an adequate view of the events related." 
— Chicago Standard. 

" Mr. Gardiner uses his researches in an admirably clear 
and fair way " — Congregationalist. 

" The ^ketcn ;.g concise, but clear and perfectly intelligible." 
— Hartford Coura?it. 

THE ENGLISH RESTORATION AND LOUIS 
XIV., from the Peace of Westphalia to the 
Peace of Nimwegen. By Osmund Airy, M.A. 

" It is crisply and admirably written. An immense amount 
of information is conveyed and with great clearness, the 
arrangement of the subjects showing great skill and a thor- 
ough command of the complicated theme." — Boston Saturday 
Evening Gazette. 

"The author writes with fairness and discrimination, and 
has given a clear and intelligible presentation of the time." — 
New York Evangelist. 

THE FALL OF THE STUARTS; and Western 
Europe. By Rev. Edward Hale, M.A. 

" A valuable compend to the general reader and scholar." 
— Providence Journal. 

"It will be found of great value. It is a very graphic 

account of the history of Europe during the 17th century, 

and is admirably adapted for the use of students." — Boston 

Saturday Evening Gazette. 

1 'An admirable handbook for the student. " — The Churchman. 

THE AGE OF ANNE. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 

"The author's arrangement of the material is remarkably 
clear, his selection and adjustment of the facts judicious, his 
historical judgment fair and candid, while the style wins by 
its simple elegance." — Chicago Standard. 

' * An excellent compendium of the history of an important 
period. " — The Watchman. 



EPOCHS OF MODERN HISTORY. 



THE EARLY HANOVERIANS— Europe from 
the Peace of Utrecht to the Peace of Aix- 
ia-Chapelle. By Edward E. Morris, M.A. 

" Masterly, condensed, and vigorous, this is one of the 
books which it is a delight to read at odd moments ; which 
are broad and suggestive, and at the same time condensed in 
treatment. " — Christian Advocate. 

"A remarkably clear and readable summary of the salient 
points of interest. The maps and tables, no less than the 
author's style and treatment of the subject, entitle the volume 
to the highest claims of recognition." — Boston Daily Ad- 
vertiser. 

FREDERICK THE GREAT, AND THE SEVEN 
YEARS' WAR. By F. W. Longman. 

"The subject is most important, and the author has treated 
it in a way which is both scholarly and entertaining." — The 
Churchfnan. 

"Admirably adapted to interest school boys, and older 
heads will find it pleasant reading." — New York Tribune. 

THE FRENCH REVOLUTION, AND FIRST 
EMPIRE. By William O'Connor Morris. With 
Appendix by Andrew D. White, LL.D., ex-President of 
Cornell University. 

" We have long needed a simple compendium of this period, 
and we have here one which is brief enough to be easily run 
through with, and yet particular enough to make entertaining 
reading." — New York Evening Post. 

"The author has well accomplished his difficult task of 
sketching in miniature the grand and crowded drama of the 
French Revolution and the Napoleonic Empire, showing 
himself to be no servile compiler, but capable of judicious 
and independent criticism." — Springfield Republican. 

THE EPOCH OF REFORM— 1 830-1 850. By 

Justin McCarthy. 

"Mr. McCarthy knows the period of which he writes 
thoroughly, and the result is a narrative that is at once enter- 
i taining and trustworthy." — New York Examiner. 

" The narrative is clear and comprehensive, and told with 
abundant knowledge and grasp of the subject."— Boston 
Courier. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL 
WORKS. 

CIVILIZATION DURING THE MIDDLE AGES. 
Especially in its Relation to Modern Civil- 
ization. By George B. Adams, Professor of History in 

Yale University. 8vo, $2.50. 

Professor Adams has here supplied the need of a text-book 
for the study of Mediaeval History in college classes at once 
thorough and yet capable of being handled in the time usually 
allowed to it. He has aimed to treat the subject in a manner 
which its place in the college curriculum demands, by present- 
ing as clear a view as possible of the underlying and organic 
growth of our civilization, how its foundations were laid and its 
chief elements introduced. 

Prof. Kendric C. Babcock, University of Minnesota : — "It 
is one of the best books of the kind which I have seen. We 
shall use it the coming term." 

Prof. Marshall S. Brown, Michigan University: — "I 
regard the work as a very valuable treatment of the great 
movements of history during the Middle Ages, and as one 
destined to be extremely helpful to young students." 

Boston Herald: — "Professor Adams admirably presents 
the leading features of a thousand years of social, political, 
and religious development in the history of the world. It is 
valuable from beginning to end." 

HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES. By E. 

Benjamin Andrews, D.D., LL.D., President of Brown 
University. With maps. Two vols., crown octavo, $4.00. 

Boston Advertiser : — " We doubt if there has been so 
complete, graphic, and so thoroughly impartial a history of our 
country condensed into the same space. It must become a 
standard." 

Advance: — "One of the best popular, general histories of 
America, if not the best." 

Herald and Presbyter : — " The very history that many 
people have been looking for. It does not consist simply of 
minute statements, but treats of causes and effects with philo- 
sophical grasp and thoughtfulness. It is the work of a scholar 
and thinker." 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. 

THE HISTORY OF ROME, from the Earliest 
Time to the Period of Its Decline. By Dr. 

Theodor Mommsen. Translated by W. P. Dickson, D.D., 
LL.D. A New Edition, Revised throughout, and embodying 
recent additions. Five vols., with Map. Price per set, $10.00. 

"A work of the very highest merit; its learning is exact 
and profound ; its narrative full of genius and skill ; its 
descriptions of men are admirably vivid." — London Times. 

"Since the days of Niebuhr, no work on Roman History 
has appeared that combines so much to attract, instruct, and 
charm the reader. Its style — a rare quality in a German 
author — is vigorous, spirited, and animated." — Dr. Schmitz. 

THE PROVINCES OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE. 
From Caesar to Diocletian. By Theodor 
Mommsen. Translated by William P. Dickson, D.D., 
LL.D. With maps. Two vols., 8vo, $6.00. 

" The author draws the wonderfully rich and varied picture 
of the conquest and administration of that great circle of 
peoples and lands which formed the empire of Rome outside 
of Italy, their agriculture, trade, and manufactures, their 
artistic and scientific life, through all degrees of civilization, 
with such detail and completeness as could have come from 
no other hand than that of this great master of historical re- 
search." — Prof. W. A. Packard, Princeton College. 

THE HISTORY OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC. 

Abridged from the History by Professor Theodor Mommsen, 
by C. Bryans and F. J. R. Hendy. i2mo, $1.75. 

" It is a genuine boon that the essential parts of Mommsen's 
Rome are thus brought within the easy reach of all, and the 
abridgment seems to me to preserve unusually well the glow 
and movement of the original." — Prof. Tracy Peck, Yale 
University. 

"The condensation has been accurately and judiciously 
effected. I heartily commend the volume as the most adequate 
embodiment, in a single volume, of the main results of modern 
historical research in the field of Roman affairs." — Prof. 
Henry M. Baird, University of City of New York. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. 



THE DAWN OF HISTORY. An Introduction 

to Pre-Historic Study. New and Enlarged Edition. 
Edited by C. F. Keary. i2mo, cloth, $1.25. 

This work treats successively of the earliest traces of man ; 
of language, its growth, and the story it tells of the pre-his- 
toric users of it ; of early social life, the religions, mythologies, 
and folk-tales, and of the history of writing. The present 
edition contains about one hundred pages of new matter, 
embodying the results of the latest researches. 

"A fascinating manual. In its way, the work is a model 
of what a popular scientific work should be." — Boston Sat. 
Eve. Gazette. 

THE ORIGIN OF NATIONS. By Professor George 
Rawlinson, M.A. i2mo, with maps, $1.00. 

The first part of this book discusses the antiquity of civiliza- 
tion in Egypt and the other early nations of the East. The 
second part is an examination of the ethnology of Genesis, 
showing its accordance with the latest results of modern 
ethnographical science. 

"A work of genuine scholarly excellence, and a useful 
offset to a great deal of the superficial current literature on 
such subjects. " — Congregationalist. 

MANUAL OF MYTHOLOGY. For the Use 
of Schools, Art Students, and General 
Readers. Founded on the Works of Pet- 
iscus, Preller, and Welcker. By Alexander 
S. Murray, Department of Greek and Roman Antiquities, 
British Museum. With 45 Plates. Reprinted from the 
Second Revised London Edition. Crown 8vo, $1.75. 

*' It has been acknowledged the best work on the subject 
to be found in a concise form, and as it embodies the results 
of the latest researches and discoveries in ancient mythologies, 
it is superior for school and general purposes as a handbook 
to any of the so-called standard works." — Cleveland Herald. 

"Whether as a manual for reference, a text-book for school 
use, or for the general reader, the book will be found very 
valuable and interesting." — Boston Journal. 



IMPORTANT HISTORICAL WORKS. 

THE HISTORY OF GREECE. By Prof. Dr. 
Ernst Curtius. Translated by Adolphus William Ward, 
M.A., Fellow of St. Peter's College, Cambridge, Prof, of 
Uistory in Owen's College, Manchester. Five volumes, 
crown 8vo. Price per set, $10.00. 

" We cannot express our opinion of Dr. Curtius' book bet- 
ter than by saying that it may be fitly ranked with Theodor 
Mommsen's great work." — London Spectator. 

"As an introduction to the study of Grecian history, no 
previous work is comparable to the present for vivacity and 
picturesque beauty, while in sound learning and accuracy of 
statement it is not inferior to the elaborate productions which 
enrich the literature of the age." — N. Y. Daily Iribune. 

CvfliSAR: a Sketch. By James Anthony Froude, 
M.A. i2mo, gilt top, $1.50. 

"This book is a most fascinating biography and is by far 
the best account of Julius Caesar to be found in the English 
language. " — The London Standard. 

"He combines into a compact and nervous narrative all 
that is known of the personal, social, political, and military 
life of Caesar ; and with his sketch of Caesar includes other 
brilliant sketches of the great man, his friends, or rivals, 
who contemporaneously with him formed the principal figures 
in the Roman world." — Harper's Monthly. 

CICERO. Life of Marcus TuIIius Cicero. By 

William Forsyth, M.A., Q.C. 20 Engravings. New 
Edition. 2 vols., crown 8vo, in one, gilt top, $2.50. 

The author has not only given us the most complete and 
well-balanced account of the life of Cicero ever published ; 
he has drawn an accurate and graphic picture of domestic life 
among the best classes of the Romans, one which the reader 
of general literature, as well as the student, may peruse with 
pleasure and profit. 

"A scholar without pedantry, and a Christian without cant, 
Mr. Forsyth seems to have seized with praiseworthy tact the 
precise attitude which it behooves a biographer to take when 
narrating the life, the personal life of Cicero. Mr. Forsyth 
produces what we venture to say will become one of the 
classics of English biographical literature, and will be wel- 
comed by readers of all ages and both sexes, of all professions 
and of no profession at all." — London Quarterly. 



VALUABLE WORKS ON 
CLASSICAL LITERATURE. 

THE HISTORY OF ROMAN LITERATURE. 
From the Earliest Period to the Death of 

MarCUS Aurelius. With Chronological Tables, etc., 
for the use of Students. By C. T. Cruttwell, M.A. Crown 
8vo, $2.50. 

Mr. Cruttwell's book is written throughout from a purely 
literary point of view, and the aim has been to avoid tedious 
and trivial details. The result is a volume not only suited 
for the student, but remarkably readable for all who possess 
any interest in the subject. 

" Mr. Cruttwell has given us a genuine history of Roman 
literature, not merely a descriptive list of authors and their 
productions, but a well elaborated portrayal of the successive 
stages in the intellectual development of the Romans and the 
various forms of expression which these took in literature. " — 
N. Y. Nation. 

UNIFORM WITH THE ABOVE. 

A HISTORY OF GREEK LITERATURE. 
From the Earliest Period of Demosthenes. 

By Frank Byron Jevons, M.A., Tutor in the University 
of Durham. Crown 8vo, $2.50. 

The author goes into detail with sufficient fullness to make 
the history complete, but he never loses sight of the com- 
manding lines along which the Greek mind moved, and a 
clear understanding of which is necessary to every intelligent 
student of universal literature. 

" It is beyond all question the best history of Greek litera- 
ture that has hitherto been published. " — London Spectator. 



CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS, 

153-157 Fifth Avenue, New York. 



